GUSTAVE BAUMANN (American, 1881-1971). "El Valorio" 1927. Color woodblock print. Signed edition in pencil: 14/120. Inscribed To Aileen and Jess Nusbaum -Gustave Baumann. In good condition. Image size: 7 ¾" x 8". Frame size: 15 ½" x 15 ¼". Margin size: 9 5/8" x 9 ¼".

From AskArt: “Gustave Baumann was born in Germany in 1881. His family immigrated to the United States in 1891, settling in Chicago. At the age of 17, Baumann was working for a commercial engraving house while attending night classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Returning to Germany in 1905, Baumann enrolled in the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Munich where he studied wood carving and mastered the European technique of color wood block prints.

After a year in Munich, Baumann resettled in Chicago, supporting himself in the commercial art field while searching for a place to inspire his fine art. In 1910, Brown County, Indiana offered him such a place. A village of few distractions, the hills, valleys and people of Nashville became his subjects. He produced a portfolio of color woodcuts entitled In the Hills of Brown and five large format color woodcuts.

His largest woodcut, The Mill Pond, measuring 25 x 33", is the largest color woodcut produced at the time. These were shown at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco where Baumann won the gold medal for printmaking. His color woodcuts had already been included in the 1911 Paris Salon and numerous exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis where his first solo exhibition was held in 1913.

In 1916, he organized the first national exhibition of color woodcuts by American artists at the Art Institute of Chicago. Baumann viewed art as "a kind of tyrant. It pushes you around. It came to me dressed up in wanderlust." This wanderlust pushed him to Wyoming, New York; New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Numerous Chicago artists including Walter Ufer, Victor Higgins and Martin Hennings effusively praised Taos as an artistic paradise and wanderlust reared again.

In 1918, Baumann headed West. Taos proved too small a village so he headed to Santa Fe. The Fine Art Museum had opened the previous year and its open door policy for artists appealed to Baumann. He eventually built himself a home on Camino de las Animas, married Jane Devereux Henderson, and lived in Santa Fe until his death in 1971.

Baumann's interest wasn't just limited to color woodcut. He produced oils and sculpture, created over sixty marionettes, which provided the community with annual Christmas shows and wrote and illustrated Frijoles Canyon Pictographs in 1939, which was honored with the Fifty Books of the Year Award.

Today his genius and individuality are recognized, and he is considered to be an American master of color woodcut. Exhibitions of his woodcuts have been viewed across the country and they are included in almost every major museum in the United States.”

A major color woodblock, he had strong ties to the Brown County Indiana Colony. Worked in Provincetown, and was one of the founders of the Santa Fe Art Colony.