Nick Engelbert Education Resources

Engelbert Kloetnik was born in 1881 in Austria. He changed his name to Nick Engelbert when he was an adult. As a young man, he traveled the world, eventually sailing to Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of twenty-eight. Upon his arrival, Engelbert toured the United States for a few years. When he met his wife in the Midwest around 1913, Engelbert settled in Hollandale, Wisconsin. In 1922, he purchased a farm he called Grandview. After seeing the Dickeyville Grotto in nearby Grant County, Engelbert was inspired to transform his property into his own roadside attraction. Using a technique he developed for building sculptures with concrete, he created more than forty sculptures that celebrated farm life, immigration, and family.

He also embellished the entire exterior of his farmhouse with concrete inlaid with stones, shells, and bright bits of glass. As Engelbert grew older, sculpting in concrete became increasingly difficult. From the comfort of his living room, he painted memories of his life and captured moments as a youthful traveler, as a young father, and as a builder of an incredible art environment.

Today, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center cares for several of the more fragile sculptures from Grandview as well as Engelbert’s collection of seventy-six paintings. Between 1991 and 1997, Kohler Foundation, Inc., acquired and preserved Grandview, and gifted it to the Pecatonica Educational Charitable Foundation, Inc. Visitors can see the site as part of the Wandering Wisconsin consortium, a group of nine art environments situated across the state.