Lasting Impressions: Four Leaders of New Mexico Printmaking

Lasting Impressions:

Four Leaders of New Mexico Printmaking

Gustave Baumann • Charles M. Capps • Norma Bassett Hall • Gene Kloss

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Lasting Impressions:

Four Leaders of New Mexico Printmaking January 29 - March 6, 2021

Gustave Baumann Charles M. Capps Norma Bassett Hall Gene Kloss

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 tel 505.988.3250 | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: Gustave Baumann, Church Ranchos de Taos, 1918, color woodcut, 10.13 x 11.33 inches

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Lasting Impressions:

Four Leaders of New Mexico Printmaking

The twentieth century was marked by exciting and imaginative new approaches toward printmaking as a major form of fine art, which established itself as a focal point for artists across the country. Most importantly, these artists saw an equal potential for creativity in the nuances of their original prints on paper as had long been implicit in oil painting and other media. The Southwest, and New Mexico in particular, became a major center for printmakers: here, artists such as Gustave Baumann, Gene Kloss, Charles M. Capps, and Norma Bassett Hall were each considered master printmakers and leaders, respectively, in woodcut, etching, aquatint, and serigraphy. All four artists drew on the landscape and architecture of the area, while simultaneously exploring the expressive possibilities they found in each of their techniques. As printmaking generally gained new life in the United States, these artists led its development in New Mexico and the Southwest.

In divergent visual languages, each artist evoked their own distinctive perceptions of the multifaceted character of the Southwest. Working in black and white, Gene Kloss implemented a delicate and agile quality of line in her hushed, atmospheric landscapes, domestic scenes, and Pueblo ceremonies. Also in black and white, Charles M. Capps’ works accentuated the rich play of light and shadow across the adobe architecture of New Mexico, making use of the aquatint medium’s singular potential for chiaroscuro. In color, Gustave Baumann’s extraordinary woodcuts included an astonishing convergence of intricate detail and the inked texture of wood-grain. Working in both woodcut and serigraphy, Norma Bassett Hall used planes of pure color to model the clear atmosphere of the New Mexico sky in her vivid and reductive images.

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These four artists were among a new vanguard who chose to center printmaking as their primary form of fine art making, approaching their media with a seriousness and boldness that was ahead of many of their contemporaries on the East Coast. It was due to the efforts of these artists that New Mexico produced some of the most important and interesting prints of the time. Fundamental to these artists, however, was their overall love for New Mexico.

In their art, they sought to capture a sense of place—and identity—during a time of great change.

Gustave Baumann, Windswept Eucalypus, 1928, color woodcut on paper, image: 9.63 x 11.5 inches

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Gustave Baumann (1881 – 1971)

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Gustave Baumann is recognized as one of the most influential American woodcut artists of the 20th century, producing a distinctive body of work that evoked the beauty and grandeur of the Southwest and America as a whole. Baumann was born in Magdeburg, Germany and emigrated to the United States at age 10, settling in Chicago. He left school at age 16 and found work in a commercial engraving house, attending night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1905, he travelled to Munich and studied color block printing at the School for Arts and Crafts, where he was heavily influenced by Jugendstil, a German artistic style rooted in English Art Nouveau and Japanese printmaking.

After his studies abroad, Baumann returned to the United States, and moved to New Mexico in 1918. There, he became a leading member of the art community and was respected for his remarkable experiments in a wide variety of media. Paul Walter, the director of the Museum of New Mexico, offered him a studio in the museum.

In the 1930s, Baumann was appointed area coordinator of the Public Works of Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. Exhibitions of Baumann's color woodcuts circulated throughout the country in large part due to two organizations: the American Federation of the Arts and the National Association of Women's Clubs.

Baumann’s woodcuts often involve a modernist treatment of subject, incorporating a bright palette, implied detail, and flat masses of color that bring a cohesive feeling of balance to his overall compositions. Baumann implemented the Japanese woodblock technique of carving individual wood blocks for each color. He often began each composition as a color sketch or gouache rendering, transferring each color to its own block and running each through the press to create his completed image. Of note, Baumann often changed colors as he was hand printing an edition, adding or omitting blocks so that impressions within an edition were often unique from one another.

Though Baumann traveled and worked in several locales in the United States and abroad, the chief portion of his legacy was formed from his time in New Mexico, where he spent nearly 50 years working in his printing studio and workshop until his death in 1971. Baumann's work is represented in over 100 museum collections in the United States and Great Britain.

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Gustave Baumann, Rio Pecos, 1920, color woodcut on paper, image: 10.88 x 9.75 inches

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Gustave Baumann, Church Ranchos de Taos, 1918, color woodcut on paper, image: 10.13 x 11.33 inches

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Gustave Baumann, Cordova Plaza, 1943, color woodcut on paper, image: 7.63 x 8 inches

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Gustave Baumann, Pecos Valley, 1921, color woodcut on paper, image: 9.5 x 11.25 inches

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Charles M. Capps (1898 - 1981)

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Charles M. Capps is recognized for his outstanding artistry in printmaking, known best for his use of the aquatint medium in evoking the landscape and architecture of New Mexico and the Midwest. His mastery of the challenging process of aquatint and its tonal variations allowed Capps to achieve an arresting and richly textured evocation of the adobe architectural forms of Santa Fe and Taos. Capps was also one of the leading members of the movement in the early-mid 20th century that sought to promote printmaking as a serious art form, serving as President of the Prairie Printmakers for twenty-three years, a group that also included Gustave Baumann, Norma Bassett Hall, and Gene Kloss, among others.

Charles M. Capps was born in Jacksonville, Illinois in 1898. After graduating from Illinois College in Jacksonville in 1920, he went on to attend the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Upon returning to Jacksonville, Capps married Anna Palmer and the couple moved to Wichita where Capps worked for the commercial printing house, Western Lithograph. Soon he began experimenting with woodcuts, creating a series of award-winning bookplates, and from 1931, he began creating an outstanding body of etchings and aquatints.

Capps was active in the Society of American Etchers, the Chicago Society of Etchers, Philadelphia Society of Etchers, Northwest Printmakers and Printmakers Society of California. It was through associations with colleagues Gustave Baumann and Doel Reed that he visited New Mexico and returned often. His subject matter shifted to Southwestern imagery beginning in 1937, leading to many of his most cherished images.

Charles M. Capps’ work is included in a number of institutional and museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa, OK, the National Academy of Design in New York, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 11

Charles M. Capps, Mexican Barbershop, 1938, aquatint and etching on paper, image: 8.5 x 11.5 inches

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Charles M. Capps, MIssion at Trampas, 1949, etching and aquatint on paper, image: 8.5 x 14 inches

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Charles M. Capps, Trees at Questa, 1953, etching on paper, image: 8.125 x 10.125 inches

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Charles M. Capps, Mountain Mission, 1967, aquatint and etching on paper, image: 5.13 x 8.63 inches

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Charles M. Capps, Taos, 1948, etching and aquatint on paper, image: 8.5 x 12.5 inches

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Charles M. Capps, San Miguel, 1971, aquatint and etching on paper, image: 6.75 x 11.67 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall (1889-1957)

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Norma Bassett Hall is regarded for her remarkable images of Great Plains and Southwest subjects in color woodcut and serigraphy (silk screen). Bassett Hall employed a reductive treatment of her landscape and domestic subject matter, using broad planes of pure color applied in areas of both translucency and opacity to evoke the light and clear atmosphere characteristic of the Southwest. She was also one of the first to elevate serigraphy, or screen-printing— previously used primarily for commercial purposes—to a fine-art context.

Born in Halsey, Oregon in 1888, Bassett Hall studied at the Portland Art Association and later the Chicago Art Institute, where she met her husband, the artist Arthur Hall. The couple settled in El Dorado, Kansas, before spending two years in Europe beginning in 1925. Of particular importance was their visit to Scotland, where she met noted printmaker Mabel Royds, who taught Bassett Hall the Japanese technique of woodblock printing. Returning to the United States, the Halls became active in a group of well-respected Kansas artists along with Charles M. Capps that formally launched the Prairie Print Makers in 1930. This group was dedicated to promoting printmaking as a serious art form for both artists and collectors. Of note, Bassett Hall was the only female founding member of the group, and the only artist member to establish her reputation through color printmaking.

In 1944, the Halls moved to Santa Fe, where they lived on Canyon Road. Not long after their arrival, Bassett Hall learned serigraphic printmaking under the sponsorship of the WPA, which would form the majority of her work in New Mexico. In her color serigraphs, Bassett Hall translated many of the techniques she had learned earlier through woodcut, including the blended intermediary tones that result from printing areas of overlapping color. The Halls later moved north to Alcalde, New Mexico, operating an art school on their property.

In New Mexico, Bassett Hall continued her leadership within the Prairie Printmakers Group. Her work was selected for an influential print exhibition organized by the Roswell Art Museum in 1946 and which toured to various cities throughout New Mexico. Today, her art is included in the collections of museum and public institutions, including the Smithsonian Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, OH, the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, OK, and the Honolulu Museum of Art in Honolulu, HI, among others.

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Norma Bassett Hall, Work + Play, 1949, serigraph on paper, image: 8 x 10 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Drying Chile, 1949, serigraph on paper, image: 8 x 10 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Aspens and Spruce, 1949, serigraph on paper, image: 11 x 12.88 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Navajo Land, 1947, color block print on paper, image: 9.38 x 14 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Mexican Farm, 1948, serigraph on paper, image: 6.5 x 9 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Road to the Village, 1948, serigraph on paper, image: 6.44 x 9 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Gray Winter, 1937, color block print on paper, image: 10.5 x 13.375 inches

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Norma Bassett Hall, Portree Bay, 1929, color block print on paper, image: 8.875 x 7 inches

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Gene Kloss (1903-1996)

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Gene Kloss is acknowledged as one of the major 20th century American printmakers, recognized for both her New Mexico landscapes and her images of the Pueblo peoples and the secretive Spanish religious group, the Penitentes (both groups of which Kloss personally befriended). While Kloss worked in a variety of media over the course of her 70-year career, she is most known for her extraordinary work in printmaking.

Kloss received widespread recognition beginning in the 1930s. A member of the Taos Art colony, she produced a series of prints for the Public Works of Art Project and the Works Progress Administration, images of Pueblo ceremonies as well as those of the Spanish Penitentes. Of her art, ArtNews wrote, “Gene Kloss is one of our most sensitive and sympathetic interpreters of the Southwest.”

Kloss was the first woman to be inducted into the National Academy of Design as a printmaker.

Working in black and white, Kloss recorded the landscape and people of New Mexico without appearing overly sentimental or maudlin. Whether conveying religious or quotidian subjects, Kloss imbued each of her images with extraordinary sensitivity and nuance using rich blacks, shifting fields of gray, and an unusual level of detail. Kloss would often say, “In this country, everything lifts—the trees, the mountains, the sky.”

Born in Oakland, California in 1903, Kloss attended the San Francisco School of Fine Arts and the University of California at Berkeley. She first visited Taos in 1925, returning for months every year before moving permanently in 1960, where she stayed until her death in 1996. Works by Kloss are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Carnegie Institute, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the National Academy of Design, among others.

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Gene Kloss, Penitente Fires, 1939, drypoint and aquatint on paper, image: 10.75 x 13.75 inches

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Gene Kloss, On Christmas Day, 1979, etching, drypoint, and aquatint on paper, image: 11 x 13.88 inches

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Gene Kloss, The Open Road, 1941, etching, drypoint, and aquatint on paper, image: 9.75 x 13.75 inches

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Gene Kloss, Noonday Shadows, 1941, etching on paper, image: 7 x 8.5 inches

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Gene Kloss, Young Apache Wife, 1954, etching on paper, image: 12 x 9 inches

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Gene Kloss, Night Mass of the Penitentes, 1932, drypoint on paper, image: 5.88 x 8.5 inches

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Gene Kloss, Taos Eagle Dancers, 1955, drypoint and aquatint on paper, image: 10.75 x 13.75 inches

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Gene Kloss, Return of the Processional, 1967, etching and drypoint on paper, image: 12.88 x 18 inches

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Gene Kloss, Tribute to the Earth, 1972, drypoint, etching, and aquatint on paper, image: 14.88 x 11.88 inches

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Gene Kloss, Winter in Telluride, 1968, etching and drypoint on paper, image: 11.75 x 14.75 inches

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Gene Kloss, December Afternoon, 1944, drypoint and aquatint on paper, image: 7.13 x 8.38 inches

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Gene Kloss, Courtyard in Chimayo, 1973, etching on paper, image: 7.38 x 9 inches

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Gene Kloss, Snow Blossoms, 1935, drypoint on paper, image: 5.875 x 6.875 inches

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Gene Kloss, Processional at Taos, 1948, drypoint, etching, and aquatint on paper, image: 9.88 x 13.88 inches

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Gene Kloss, Winter Woods, 1941, etching on paper, image: 6.75 x 8.38 inches

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Gene Kloss, Summer Evening in New Mexico, 1941, drypoint and aquatint on paper, image: 8.88 x 11.75 inches

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Gene Kloss, Corn Husking, 1960, drypoint and etching on paper, image: 8.875 x 11.875 inches

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Gene Kloss, Midsummer Fiesta, 1972, etching and drypoint on paper, image: 11.75 x 14.75 inches

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com Š 2021 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC Artwork Š Gustave Baumann, Charles M. Capps, Norma Bassett Hall & Gene Kloss

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