Blanche Lazzell 1878-1956

A remarkably talented, versatile, and innovative artist, Blanche Lazzell experimented with Post-Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, and abstraction in her paintings and prints, and was among the earliest modernists in the United States. Her boldly designed and lushly painted oils and her vibrantly colored and exquisitely executed color woodblocks helped establish her fame as a creative force in modern American art during the first decades of the twentieth century.  

Lazzell was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. At an early age she decided that her education was more important than a conventional married life. While at West Virginia University she boldly expressed: “I am going to be an independent maiden lady. And I will show people I can be as happy as anyone.” Lazzell’s innate sense of self-reliance served her well and gave her the freedom and confidence she needed to study art. In 1907-8 she trained at the Art Students League in New York with William Merritt Chase. In 1912 she embarked on a summer trip to Europe with a group of women. In the fall of that year she returned to Paris where enrolled at the Académie Julian and Académie Moderne. Her study at the Académie Moderne was best suited to her artistic style and sensibility. There, the landscapes of Paul Cezanne were an important teaching source and influence, which Lazzell would carry with her after her return to the States.

After her study in Paris, Lazzell went back and forth from Morgantown, West Virginia to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she spent a few summers studying with Charles Webster Hawthorne and also most importantly was introduced to color woodblock printing. Lazzell was a naturally gifted printmaker, and her prints won consistent critical acclaim. Indeed, today, Lazzell is best known for her graphic work.

Lazzell gravitated toward a modernist artistic style. She first visited Provincetown in 1915, when the town was bustling with expatriate European artists and writers seeking to escape the First World War. Lazzell’s affiliation with the Provincetown Printers, a group of exceptional women printmakers, brought her into the inner circle of American modernists living and working in the village.

In the summer of 1916, Lazzell studied with Oliver Newberry Chaffee, who taught her the method of white line color woodcuts. Lazzell soon became one of the leading exponents of the color woodblock print in America, creating 138 woodblocks between 1916 and 1965. She was prolific in the 1920s and created prints of semi-abstract still lifes and landscapes that reveal her mastery of composition, color, and skillful technique. She developed a favored format of nearly square blocks about 12 x 14 inches. The concepts of synthetic cubism, which were essential to her artistic vision, are apparent in all of her prints. The landscapes generally present spatial illusions, while the floral still lifes seem flat and hover on the cusp of pure abstraction.

Lazzell thought of her prints as independent works of art, which is why she did not number them in an edition. She printed each print herself by hand, using spoons. Lazzell preferred French watercolor pigments, which were fragile, but heightened the texture of the woodblock itself. She commented that the prints themselves became "handsome, sculptural objects." In a 1940 letter to her cousin Grace, Lazzell wrote "I consider them my most valuable possessions."

Many of Lazzell's landscape prints depict recognizable locations in Provincetown and West Virginia. In Provincetown she liked to find high vantage points and often surveyed the town from the tower of the Pilgrim Monument. The shapes of buildings and streets recall rhomboids and parallelograms; the compositions are strikingly cubist.

While printmaking was never her sole occupation as an artist, she developed a singular style and technique with the medium that was in completely in line with her deep engagement with Modernism. She constantly strove to develop fresh modes of expression and new ways of seeing. Her prints are exceptional demonstrations of her lifelong artistic pursuit.