Gustave Baumann (1881-1971)
Gustave Baumann was born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1881. He immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of 10. As a young man, Baumann apprenticed at the Chicago’s Franklin Engraving Company and took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. Baumann traveled back to Germany in 1904 to enroll at Munich’s Kunstgewerbeschule. There the artist experimented with woodcut techniques and printmaking, for which he developed a true passion. Upon concluding his studies, Baumann returned to America. He won the God Medal for printmaking at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and organized the first exhibition of American woodcut printed for the Art Institute of Chicago. Baumann moved to New Mexico in 1918, where he developed his interest in Native American culture and the natural landscape – the subject of much of his work. He lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the rest of his life, and important member of its artistic community.
A polychrome woodcut is comprised of several block printing, each of which produces and individual color, layered upon the last. Individual woodcuts must be harmoniously converged to create one unified image. Although he experimented with other forms of artistic expression including illustration art, play writing, and marionette making, it is the depth and color of Baumann’s woodblock prints that make him one of the master printmakers of the 20th century.
-courtesy of Rago Arts, June 2012