The New Mexico Museum of Art Shows The Prints of Gustave Baumann

Written by Frederick Shackleton Thursday, 16 June 2011 22:38

Santa Fe, NM - The New Mexico Museum of Art is presenting two exhibitions this summer celebrating Gustave Baumann, his prodigious creativity, and his love for New Mexico. On view through September 2nd in the Governor’s Gallery at the New Mexico State Capitol is "Gustave Baumann: Painter, Printmaker, and Puppeteer", and opening July 1st at the New Mexico Museum of Art is "The Prints of Gustave Baumann". Both exhibitions were curated by Merry Scully, curator of the Governor’s Gallery. "The Prints of Gustave Baumann", will remain on display at the museum until December. Gustave Baumann lived in Santa Fe until his death in 1971. Many of Baumann’s most popular prints depict the Southwestern landscape and regional traditions of his beloved New Mexico.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century there was a renewed interest in the craft of traditional European printmaking and in the color woodcut prints coming from Japan. Many of Baumann’s prints include asymmetrical compositions, bright colors, curving lines, and patterned surfaces that appear to be influenced by the Japanisme that was in vogue when he was a student. While familiar and exhibiting with artists who worked in the Japanese manner, Baumann produced his prints in the distinctly European fashion that he studied in Germany. Using ground pigments and oil based inks that are applied to the printing block surface with a brayer, each block image transferred to paper using a printing press. Baumann began his woodblock prints with a series of studies and usually worked from one final opaque watercolor study on brown paper.This final study would be used to transfer the image to a block of wood, and to work out the division of colors for each block to be used in the edition. Baumann printed with a combination of translucent and opaque inks to achieve his desired color scheme and tonality.

The New Mexico Museum of Art building dates only to 1917, but its architects looked to the past, and based the design on the 300 year-old mission churches at Acoma and other pueblos. It shares the graceful simplicity of pueblo architecture and the sense of being created from the earth. In turn, the building established the Pueblo Spanish Revival style of architecture, for which Santa Fe is known. It was built to become the art gallery of the Museum of New Mexico, which had been founded in 1909 by archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett. He had begun holding art shows in the historic Palace of the Governors, then realized that an art gallery would be needed to effectively promote art throughout the region. The architects, Rapp and Rapp, had built the wildly successful New Mexico pavilion for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. They enlarged and modified that design and proposed it for the new art gallery. The Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico opened in 1917, and many of the works that were exhibited at the opening remain in the collection today. The early Art Gallery’s “open door” policy encouraged artists working in New Mexico to exhibit their work, since Santa Fe’s commercial gallery network was years away. That welcome, mixed with the excitement about New Mexico that was generated by the tourism industry, enticed artists with formal training from other parts of the country. The resulting blending and cross-influences of Native American, Hispanic, and European-based cultures created a unique body of work that is the basis of the New Mexico Museum of Art collection.  The museum changed its name over the years, as it grew and redefined its mission. The current name, The New Mexico Museum of Art, was adopted in 2007 to reflect the breadth of New Mexico art.  Its previous name, "The Museum of Fine Arts" had been adopted in 1962. Visit the museum's website at ... http://nmartmuseum.org

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