Desert Creatures

Gustave Baumann

Desert Creatures is a color woodcut with aluminum leaf and is editioned over 100 and dated 1967. The blocks were first carved and printed in 1951 and impressions bore various titles, including Black Lava—White Sands, Malpai and White Sand, Lava and White Sand, and White Sand and Lava.

Baumann printed his blocks in 1952 when he introduced desert creatures into the center of the image. In 1967, he returned to these blocks and printed at least 81 impressions. The desert creatures remain but the sky and the lava formation in the foreground are highlighted with aluminum leaf.

Shifting, glistening gypsum dunes, some as much as 40 feet high, are located in the Tularosa Basin and make up a part of the White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Baumann mischievously placed the Camel Rock formation, which is located between Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the midst of the rock formations depicted in his woodcut.