Nov 7, 2014 through Mar 29, 2015
Gustave Baumann is one of the most recognized and beloved names associated with the Santa Fe art world in the 20th century. For more than five decades, beginning in 1918, the internationally renowned printmaker cultivated friendships with other artists that were full of colorful, artistic, humorous and small-town flavor—all of it brought to life in holiday greeting cards they made for one another. With guileless good humor and steady craft, the cards captured the personal lives and preoccupations that encapsulate the memories and spirit of their times.
In Gustave Baumann and Friends: Artist Cards from Holidays Past, opening November 7, Tom Leech, director of the Palace Press, and guest curator Jean Moss pull from a cache of more than 400 cards donated to the New Mexico History Museum in 2012 by the Ann Baumann Trust. Buttressing the collection are loans from private collectors and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Besides “Gus” Baumann, the exhibit features examples by such New Mexico favorites as Paul Horgan; Olive Rush; Willard Clark; Barbara Latham; Joseph Imhof; Louis Ewing; Will Shuster; Chuzo Tamotzu; B.J.O. Nordfeldt; Ernest and Helen Blumenschein; John Sloan; and Tom Lea. The cards are held at the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library.
The Museum of New Mexico Press is publishing a companion book on Oct. 15. Leech will produce a limited-edition Palace Press version of it, using Baumann’s original blocks and paper found in the artist’s Santa Fe studio after his death in 1971.