Image Not Available

CARL OSCAR BORG

1879 - 1947

BiographySwedish-born Carl Oscar Borg became a fine genre artist of Southern California and the Southwestern states. His specialty was painting the everyday lives and the ceremonies of Native Americans. He said of them, "The Indians, of course, interested me because to my mind they are the 'only Americans,' a fast disappearing race, and wanted to try and preserve some of their customs and religious life in a permanent form."

Borg was born in 1879 in Grinstad, Sweden. In 1899 he left his home for Stockholm, where he worked on ships as an apprentice painter. After working as an assistant portrait painter in France and England, Borg arrived in America in 1901. He lived and worked in Norfolk, Virginia, New York City, and Canada before settling in California in 1904. he was employed as a set painter for the fledgling movie industry.

Borg painted throughout California and the Southwest, and his first one-man show was given at the Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles in 1905. In 1909 art patron Phoebe Apperson Hearst (mother of William Randolph Hearst) saw Borg's work and was impressed by it. She decided to sponsor him, and offered to send him to Europe for five years to study. In Spain and Egypt, Borg's exposure to the desert was important for his future work.

Borg was a great success in Europe. When he returned, Phoebe Hearst commissioned him to do a series of paintings portraying Indian tribal ceremonies, including the Hopi Snake Dance and the Ninan Kachina Dance.

He was fond of using opaque water color (gouache), a fast-drying medium. When he worked among the Indians, his paintings were usually finished on the spot.

(from curatorial binder)

Person TypeIndividual