FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, artist Gustave Baumann tried to get his passion project, Little Saints of New Mexico, published. But a circuitous route full of obstacles prevented his artistic homage to the saint carvers of New Mexico from seeing the light of day—until now, more than 50 years after Baumann’s death. This month, the Museum of New Mexico Press plans to release Printing the Spirit: Gustave Baumann’s Santos by Thomas Leech and Carmella Padilla, which examines the woodblock artist’s profound relationship with the centuries-old traditions of wood carving and painting of saints.
“It’s kind of baffling now,” says Padilla, an award-winning journalist and author. “But at the time he was doing [Little Saints], Baumann was not who he is to us today, although he was revered within artistic circles and by people who understood that his work was impeccable.”
A key figure in the Santa Fe art scene, Baumann began the project with author Mary Austin and poet Peggy Pond Church in 1927, when some Spanish arts and crafts of New Mexico were in danger of extinction. “The problem of all antique objects is effacing the ravages to time; in this santos are no exception,” Baumann wrote in his introduction to Little Saints. But some reasons for Baumann’s book going unpublished extend beyond its artistic focus, including the quality of offset lithographic printing at the time, which couldn’t match that of an actual woodblock.
Printing the Spirit is essentially Little Saints and then some. Leech and Padilla contribute major essays that detail Baumann’s publishing misadventures. The new book also includes a selection of Baumann’s renderings of 34 bultos and retablos, essays by Austin, poetry by Pond Church, and proofs of Little Saints.
“Call it the biography of a book—a book about a book—and how it finally happened,” writes Leech in the preface. Few know Baumann’s work as intimately as Leech, an experienced printer, book artist, and former director of the Palace Press at the New Mexico History Museum. He spent extensive time researching the woodcut artist’s archives after they were donated to the museum in 2021. “I could dig into past correspondence and the backstory of this book,” he says. “He put so much work into it.”
The records helped Leech realize he might be able to finally make Baumann’s dream come true. “I looked at all the stuff and said, ‘I can print this,’ ” says Leech, who also serves as guest curator of Gustave Baumann: The Artist’s Environment, which opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art on July 18.
Similarly, Baumann’s rustic approach and minimal use of color exhibit a kinship with the santos whose work he depicts. “There was definitely an attraction of materials—wood, knives, and chisels—which were his primary materials,” Padilla says. “Also it was the honesty of the work. It’s straightforward, genuine, and was intended to be accessible. It had a purpose.”
Printing the Spirit: Gustave Baumann’s Santos
By Thomas Leech and Carmella Padilla, Essays by Gustave Baumann and Mary Austin, Poetry by Peggy Pond Church