Dimensions 10 3/4 × 9 3/4 in. (27.31 × 24.77 cm) (image)16 9/16 × 13 9/16 in. (42.07 × 34.45 cm) (sheet)
Gustave Baumann created this color woodcut, Hillside Woods. At first glance, one is struck by the density and texture created by Baumann's technique. Look at the interplay of light and shadow, achieved through distinct blocks of color and line. The composition invites you into the woods, but note how the artist controls your view. Baumann masterfully uses the woodcut medium. See how each tree and leaf is rendered with sharp lines and defined shapes. The colors are muted, yet rich. The green and brown tones create a sense of depth and volume, characteristic of the American Arts and Crafts movement. This work destabilizes established notions of landscape art. It’s not a picturesque scene but rather an intimate look into the structure of nature. It is a study in form and texture. Baumann’s art asks us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world, not as a backdrop, but as a complex system of signs and forms.
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In 1917, the year before Gustave Baumann settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he visited his wealthy friend Lydia Avery Coonley Ward at her western New York estate, called Hillside. The print "Hillside Woods" originated during that trip. Baumann had recently ordered his own small printing press from a Chicago supplier and had it shipped directly to Hillside. He used the same press his entire career. A German émigré who moved to Chicago as a child, Baumann spent a year in Munich in his mid-twenties to learn printmaking. Like German printmakers centuries earlier, he preferred making prints on a manual press. While many of his American contemporaries were following the Japanese method of inking a print (applying paper to the inked block by hand and rubbing the back of the paper to transfer the ink), Baumann liked the consistent impressions he could get by using a press. He was also something of a maverick in his use of oil-based, rather than water-based, inks, which explains how he achieved the forceful blues and greens in these hundreds of tiny, intricately carved leaves.
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