b. 1921 d. 1977
Site Affiliation: Langlais Art Preserve
Born in a Maine logging community, Bernard Langlais engaged with materials, subjects, and working methods that reconciled his rural roots with mainstream artistic trends. He showed early artistic talent and earned scholarships to the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and a Fulbright to study the work of Edvard Munch in Norway. Langlais developed a modernist painting style, characterized by bold colors and flattened perspective. In 1956, while repairing a wall in his Maine summer cottage, Langlais was captivated by working with wood scraps, which he arranged into mosaic-like compositions. Calling this process “painting with wood,” he soon abandoned oil painting—a shift that gained immediate attention in New York’s art world. Despite his success, Langlais grew disenchanted by the city’s gallery culture and eager to work on a larger scale. He purchased a farm adjacent to his cottage and returned full-time to his home state. In the last eleven years of his life, he constructed more than 65 monumental sculptures on the land around his home, as well as a massive oeuvre of smaller scale sculptures and reliefs. The product of his insatiable work ethic, Langlais’s art environment expressed his love for the animal kingdom and the Maine outdoors.
Primary Medium: Sculpture, Wood Assemblage
Primary Stylistic Term: Modernism, Animalier
HAHS Affiliations: In Cushing, Langlais lived just a few miles from artist Andrew Wyeth and from Alvaro and Christina Olson, frequent subjects in Wyeth’s paintings. After her death in 1968, Langlais constructed an outsized sculpture of Christina in the pose and pink dress widely recognized from Wyeth’s Christina’s World (1948, MoMA). Langlais titled the work “Local Girl” and remarked that “he thought it would be interesting to see her face.”
Fun Fact: Langlais was the oldest of 10 children. This afforded him use of a loft in his grandparents’ barn for an art studio. Referring to this rustic, art-filled space, his wife Helen said, “In a way, he spent the rest of his life recreating it.”
Recommended Publications: Bernard Langlais at the Colby College Museum of Art, ed. Hannah W. Blunt (2014); Bernard Langlais: Independent Spirit, by Aprile Gallant (2002).