A Lilac Year

 

Gustave Baumann

  1881 - 1971 (biography)

1949 /1961 

color woodcut 

12 1/4 x 13 1/8" image 

pencil, lower right 

II 76/125 '61 

titled, lower left; dated after edition 

GB139 

cream Ansbach wove 

ii/ii; from the final printing campaign of 1961 

artist 

AB2097 

SOLD

A Lilac Year features Santa Fe, New Mexico in springtime. Spring appears to have been a favorite theme in Baumann's imagery: here he captured the lilacs in bloom near his home and in other woodcuts he featured blossoming trees and celebrations of the season. This large square format appealed to Baumann and many his gouache studies were large. He first used this format in 1919 for his color woodcut Pinon Grand Canyon and he eventually employed it for thirty-five of his color woodcuts. A Lilac Year was first published in 1949 but after printing only 29 impressions Baumann discarded the blocks. In 1951 he recut new blocks and issued this later woodcut under the same title. He was still printing his edition in 1961 and many impressions are found with this date. Baumann, printmaker and painter, was born in Germany in 1881. 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, he headed to the Southwest to inquire into the artist's colony of Taos, New Mexico. Thinking it too crowded and too social, he boarded a train that stopped in Santa Fe. The Museum of Fine Art had open the previous year and it's 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.
1/8/10