Malapai

Gustave Baumann

For the third edition of "Malapai", printed in 1936, Gustave Baumann chose a warm sage green for the cloudy sky, echoing the colors of the valley floor below. As noted in the catalogue raisonne, the New Mexico Malpais (badlands) are now a part of the El Malpais National Monument, with sandstone bluffs shaped by wind and water. In Baumann's notes, he states:

In the search for first principles in art one certainly cannot go back any further for an incentive than what we find in the Southwest. Here the blind forces of nature had an uncanny preference for what later in this seeing world we recognize as "Significant Form." There is a feeling of rightness in the confusion of shapes thrown about on the landscape with its multi-colored ash, mud, and lava flows, and yet it is disconcerting when I find that what gives it art value is no more than a thin film of iridescence caused by the atmosphere. - p. 347, In a Modern Rendering - the Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann, Chamberlain, 2019.