Gustave Baumann

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971)

Baumann, a printmaker and painter was born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1881. Baumann emigrated to Chicago as a young boy. 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 School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1918, Baumann headed to the Southwest to inquire into the artist’s colony of Taos, New Mexico. Thinking it was too crowded and too social, he boarded a train that stopped in Santa Fe. The Museum of Fine Art had opened the previous year and its open-door policy for artists appealed to Baumann. He remained in Santa Fe until his death in 1971. Exhibitions of his woodcuts have traveled across the country and his woodcuts are housed in the collections of almost every major museum in the United States.

He had strong ties to the Brown County (IN) colony, worked in Provincetown, and was one of the founders of the Santa Fe art colony along with John Sloan, Randall Davey, and Fremont Ellis. His book, Frijoles Canyon Pictographs, was awarded Fifty Books of the Year (1940). WPA area coordinator.

Member: Palette & Chisel Cl, 1904; Santa Fe AC (founding mem.) 1920; Taos Soc. Artists (assoc. mem.) 1922; Soc. New Mexico Printers (founding mem.) 1922; Hon. Fellow, Sch. Am. Research, 1952.

Source: ArtPrice.com