Gustave Baumann & Friends: Artist Cards from Holidays Past

Off all the artists who have called Santa Fe Home, Gustave baumann is among the most beloved. For nearly five decades beginning in 1918, the renowned printmaker cultivated friendships and other art colonists that were full of the colourful, artistic, humorous, small town flavor brought to life in this delightful collection of holiday cards the artists made for each other and their families. B.j.O. Nordfeldt, Ernest Blumenschein, Will Shuster, Doel Reed, Willard Nash and John Sloan and many more join Baumann in the Christmas and New Year greeting cards assembled here that range from satirical and whimiscal to humorous and hopeful, with commentary about the current state of the world or the artist’s place in the world. Woodcuts, phot-engraving, lithography, etching-the hand-drawn, hand-painted and hand-coloured cards show off the personalities of the artists and how the events of the world around them touched their lives in personal, often bemused ways. Drawn from the Ann Baumann Trust as well as museum and private collections, the cards will be part of an exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of History curated by Jean Moss and Palace of the Governors Press director and printmaker Thomas Leech.