Gustave Baumann in California

Exhibit Dates: March 5, 2017-August 6 ,2017

December 8, 2016

Gustave Baumann - The Town Of Nashville

Palm Harbor, FL -- The Two Red Roses Foundation is pleased to participate in the Pasadena Museum of California Arts exhibition: Baumann in California.

Gustave Baumann was a pioneer in the development of color woodcut printmaking in the United States. Born in Germany in 1881, Baumann came to Chicago at the age of ten with his family. Showing talent in art, he began working at an engraving house at 17 and took night classes at the Chicago Art Institute. He was to become an icon of American color printmaking from the Arts and Crafts period.

When early printmakers were turning towards the East, especially Japan where prints were hand rubbed and they used water-based paints, Baumann went to Munich in 1904 to train for a year. He learned, in the European tradition of color relief printing, to use oil-based inks and print his blocks on a large press. When he returned to Chicago, he worked as a commercial artist and continued to study art at night. After saving enough money, he moved to Nashville in Brown County, Indiana (1910-1917) and devoted himself entirely to the development of his art and, in particular to his color woodcut print technique.

Although Baumann is particularly associated with the Southwest and Midwest, he made two trips to California and memorialized two of its greatest natural assets in his prints - the coast and the forests. From the TRRF collection of color woodblock prints, five of Baumann's Hills o’ Brown series (Courthouse Yard, In the Hills o'Brown, Mathis Alley, The Door Yards, and Town of Nashville(pictured above)) and three of his largest color woodcuts (Harden Hollow, Washington Barnew Cabin, and Plum and Peach Bloom will be on display along with approximately 17 additional California-subject prints, progressive proofs, and woodblocks.

For more information on the exhibit, please visit the Pasadena Museum of California Art here.