Gustave Baumann

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Gustave Baumann (1881, Magdeburg, Germany - 1971, Santa Fe, New Mexico) was a printmaker and painter, and one of the leading figures of the color woodcut revival in America.[1] His works have been shown at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the New Mexico Museum of Art.[2] He is also recognized for his role in the 1930s as area coordinator the Public Works of Art Project of the Works Progress Administration.[3]

At the age of 10, he moved to the United States with his family, and by age 17 he was working for an engraving house while attending night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. He returned to Germany in 1904 to attend the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Munich where he studied wood carving and learned the techniques of wood block prints. After returning to the U.S. he began producing color woodcuts as early as 1908, earning his living as a graphic artist.

He spent time in Brown County, Indiana as a member of the Brown County Art Colony, developing his printmaking technique. He followed the traditional European method of color relief printing using oil-based inks and printing his blocks on a large press. By this time he had developed his personal artist's seal: the opened palm of a hand on a heart. His Mill Pond is the largest color woodcut produced at the time. These were shown at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition where Baumann won the gold medal for color woodcut. In 1918, he headed to the Southwest to inquire into the artists' colony of Taos, New Mexico. Thinking it too crowded and too social, he boarded the train which stopped in Santa Fe. Its Museum of Fine Art had opened the previous year and its open door policy for artists appealed to Baumann.

In Santa Fe, Baumann became known as a master of woodcuts and marionette-making, also producing oils and sculpture. His work depicted southwestern landscapes, ancient Indian petroglyphs, scenes of Pueblo life, and gardens and orchards. He remained in Santa Fe for more than fifty years until his death in 1971.[4]

"Art...is a kind of tyrant; it pushes you around. It came to me dressed in wanderlust" -Gustave Baumann

[edit] Books

All the Year Round by James Whitcomb Riley. Bobbs Merrill Co., 1912. Twelve color woodcuts by Gustave Baumann.


[edit] References

  1. ^ Prints With/Out Pressure: American Relief Prints from the 1940s through the 1960s, New York Public Library
  2. ^ Honorees list, Living Treasures Oral History Collection, 1982-, University of New Mexico University Libraries
  3. ^ Gustave Baumann, Smithsonian American Art Museum
  4. ^ Inventory of the Gustave Baumann Collection, 1918-1993, Rocky Mountain Online Archive
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