Redwood

Redwood grew out of a car trip Gustave Baumann took to California while living in New Mexico. Rather than focusing on the postcard-worthy girth that redwoods are famous for, he presented the hopeful image of a sapling, looking a bit like a toddler standing amid the legs of grownups. Baumann was a German émigré who moved to Chicago as a child. Very quickly his father abandoned the family. By 1904 Baumann had saved enough money to study printmaking at the Royal School of Arts and Crafts in Munich. There he adopted the German tradition of printing with a manual press and using oil-based inks. He also explored German folk art, which may have influenced the repeating forms and simple hatch marks of the decorative foliage here.