Cliffdwellings

Gustave Baumann

Cliffdwellings was the first of twelve color woodcuts included in Baumann’s New Mexico Portfolio published in 1924. The color woodcuts were editioned over 100 but the editions were never completed. Baumann’s choice of titles is intriguing as it can relate to the pines clinging to the rim of the canyon or the outlines of dwellings on the sheer face of the cliff.

El Rito de los Frijoles is a magical place of which Baumann wrote: “Drowsy days in a land that had been asleep for centuries—not even the presence of the surveyor archeologist artist journalist and the ubiquitous movie man could break the spell—one might sit under the tall pines hearing the waters of the little river of El beans or more poetically called El Rito de los Frijoles while beyond the lacy silhouettes of the Pine and Poplar one sees the sheer cliffs and at their foot the remains of habitation that invite one to speculate as to just what life must have been there in bygone days….the descendants of these vanished people now living in the valley below have the softest gentle voices and it is curious how one can hear these same voices still vibrating somewhere between the bird notes, rippling of the water and singing of the pines.”