Thu, May 29
|Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse
Carmella Padilla & Thomas Leech, Printing the Spirit: Gustave Baumann’s Santos
In "Printing the Spirit," Leech and Padilla bring together for the first time a selection of Baumann’s renderings of thirty-four bultos and retablos and the proofs he made for "The Little Saints of New Mexico."
Date, Time & Location
May 29, 2025, 6:00 PM MDT
Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
About the Event
Join us in-store or register to watch on Zoom here.
Pre-order Printing the Spirit ($34.95, hardcover, publishing April 15) from CWB online here or call the store to order. Signed copies will be available after the event.
It is perhaps taking the thing too lightly in a country where constant battle between life and desert makes the invocation of supernatural forces very necessary, but New Mexico saints have very human traits, and the old santeros have made them real. —Gustave Baumann
In 1927, Gustave Baumann, already celebrated for his colorful and innovative woodcuts, turned his attention to documenting the works of traditional New Mexican santeros (saint makers). One of the first early-twentieth-century artists to recognize that the carving of bultos and the painting of retablos represented a distinct art form that merited respect and preservation on its own terms, Baumann sought to express their essence through the medium he had mastered. In the late 1920s and…