Society of Ozark Painters

Like many other artist groups during the 20th century, the Society of Ozark Painters came together in the south-central Missouri region known as the Ozarks. Started in 1914, Chicago artists Carl Kraftt co-founded the Society of Ozark Painters with Frank Bernard Nuderscher, Carl Waldeck, Oscar Berninghaus and Rudolph Ingerle. The artists selected the Ozarks after Carl Krafft spent a summer there painting and was drawn to the mountains' tranquility and the landscapes . Many of the artists in the Society of Ozark Painters worked in an impressionist style and depicted the Ozark landscape in changing seasons and light. While Krafft and Ingerle were originally from Chicago, Frank Nuderscher was a Saint Louis native with a long career which included painting made in the Ozarks as well as cityscapes, murals and illustrations.

Select Sources

Bertha Hempstead, “Society,” Topeka State Journal (October 30, 1915): 16, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1915-10-30/ed-1/seq-16/.

Lena M. McCauley, "A Painter Poet of the Ozarks," Fine Arts Journal 34, no. 9 (1916): 465-472.

Elizabeth Kennedy, Chicago Modern, 1893-1945 (Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2004).

Contributors

Sydney Breakfield, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Record Published

Published on September 20, 2021