Grandview Art Environment, Wisconsin

Grandview is a “folk art environment” made by Nick Engelbert, an Austrian immigrant who settled on the property here in 1922, working a small farm with his wife, and raising a family.  He started making concrete sculptures outside his house in the mid 1930s, and fifteen years later, his yard was full of more than 40. He also decorated the exterior of his farmhouse with a mosaic of stones, ceramics, and sculpted figures. He turned to painting in the 1950s, but welcomed visitors to the sculpture garden he called Grandview. When his wife died in 1960, he sold the property and moved to Baltimore, where he died two years later. Grandview fell into disrepair. In 1991, the Kohler Foundation bought it, and over the years restored it, and opened it to the public.