On display Sep 25, 2009 - Apr 3, 2010
A long-term exhibition at the Museum of Art highlights Baumann's many talents, featuring some of his more obscure, yet beautiful, work. Gustave Baumann: A Santa Fe Legend runs indefinitely beginning September 25. 2009, in the Women’s Board Room.
Born in Germany in 1881, Baumann eventually settled down in Santa Fe, taking inspiration from the New Mexican countryside for many of his woodblock prints. In 1931, he began carving his “little people”—marionettes that he toured around the state for many years. Baumann’s legacy lives on today through replicas of his loveable little people, who entertain young and old alike at the Museum of Fine Arts annual Christmas festivity.
A highly prolific artist, Baumann carved more than sixty-five marionettes during his lifetime. His marionette self-portrait, as well as marionette representations of his daughter and actress wife, Jane Devereaux Henderson, will be featured in the exhibition. More images of these and other marionettes, including his camera-toting “Tourist,” can be viewed in the museum's e-Gallery of Pulling Strings.
Baumann began his wood-cut prints by making gouache paintings of a local scene. These opaque watercolor paintings relied on flat planes of color and were used to resolve the color relationships of the resulting print. Baumann used the original painting as a template to cut the multiple woodblocks used to print the finished image.
Images from the Exhibition
Summer Rain
Gustave Baumann