Writing to a friend about her work in 1944, Blanche Lazzell (1878–1956) promised: “It will be my own or nothing.” Fiercely independent, Lazzell’s candid statement aptly embodies the particular strain of her modernist spirit: ambitious, flourishing, and uncompromising. Featuring over 50 paintings, prints, and works on paper, “Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist” at the Albany Institute of History & Art presents the underappreciated achievements of an artist whose work played a key role in defining American art. Her dynamic color combinations, Cubist-infused geometric style, and harmonious compositions pull us into an eloquent dance with avant-garde formalism while the timeline of her artworks illuminate the evolution of her practice, from conservative talent to vanguard master. Where her early works reflect her natural skill as a trained artist, her later works reveal her fearless interpretation of abstract forms.
Born and raised in Maidsville, West Virginia, Lazzell received a degree in fine arts from West Virginia University, Morgantown, in 1905. She went on to attend classes at The Art Students League of New York, tour Europe, and ultimately study in Paris with esteemed artists including Fernand Leger and Albert Gleizes. In 1918, she established her studio in the thriving arts colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she worked alongside celebrated painter and teacher Hans Hofmann. This ambitious move would prove to be a turning point: there she co-founded the Provincetown Printers and was respected as a leading figure of white-line color woodblock printmaking.
Partially deafened by illness as a teenager, Lazzell became a champion of sophisticated visual melodies. She alternated between architectural scenery and vibrant flora, whose metaphysical essence she sought to capture via representation and abstraction. In a written communication from 1927, Lazzell described her mystical convictions: “When we modernists paint a realistic object, we get beneath the surface and give you the very spiritual substance of it.” Hollyhock, 1917, for example, is an abundant vision of these slender beauties set against chalky white buildings as they radiate a divine aura in their harmonious co-existence.
Shell, 1930, exudes a confident modernist edge with its ochre and maroon-hued mash-up of abstracted shapes, stripes, and polka dots that buoy the white husk of a conch that anchors the painting. Her bold Still Life, 1939, an image of a skeletal structure against a jumbled backdrop, is a compelling companion to the iconic bone paintings of Lazzell’s more famous contemporary Georgia O’Keeffe. By the 1940s, hearty petunias began to surface as a leitmotif in Lazzell’s orchestra of brilliant forms. White Petunia, 1945, is a luscious work that reflects her unabashed love for these beings. In this monotype, a hearty ivory bloom takes center stage as a radiant embodiment of joy while surrounded by a supporting cast of hazy pink and purple perennials. The presentation in Albany features several photos of Lazzell, including one of her standing stoically outside her little seaside studio in Provincetown, the dock utterly engulfed by the planted flowers and flourishing blossoms that surround her abode.
With Church Around the Corner, 1949, Lazzell’s expert graphic line and modernist style is at their most assured. In this painting, a pile-on of urban buildings under a light grey horizon directs our gaze toward the skinny white cross in the distance, giving a rich and dynamic impression of this cityscape. That year, the artist community in Provincetown organized a series of exhibitions and programs titled “Forum 49,” and one of these shows included Lazzell as one of four trailblazing modernists. This recognition would inspire her final push with abstraction, and among her strongest works from this period is Planes II, 1952, a woodblock print of haphazard shapes that exist in perfect relation with each other, where perpendicular lines, circles, and oblong forms overlap to create a balanced design that also reaches into the next half-century.
