Gustave Baumann and Friends: Artists Cards from Holidays Past

Of 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 with other art colonists that were full of the colorful, 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 whimsical to humorous and hopeful, with commentary about the current state of the world or the artist’s place in the world. Woodcuts, photo-engraving, lithography, etching—the hand-drawn, hand-printed and hand-colored 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.The cards will be part of an exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of History (opens November 2014) curated by Jean Moss and Palace of the Governors Press director and printmaker Thomas Leech.