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 she 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 Cézanne 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. She was also introduced to color woodblock printing there. Lazzell was a naturally gifted printmaker, and her prints won consistent critical acclaim.

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.

In 1923 Lazzell returned to Europe and studied with Albert Gleizes, André Lhote, and Fernand Léger and embarked on an intensive study of Cubism. Her strong interest in structure, geometry and vibrant color became the hallmark of her mature painting style. This exposure to European modernism, particularly the rigor of Cubism, worked in concert with her early academic training, deep engagement with printmaking, exposure to the Arts and Crafts Movement, and willingness to experiment in other media – all leading to the development of an artistic style that was uniquely her own.

Lazzell had a long history of painting and printing flowers and plants. Gardening was an extension of her creative pursuits and provided tactile experience for her fascination with flowers and plants. This interest is seen most prominently in her prints, but she painted a number of still lifes over the course of her career that demonstrate her evolution as colorist to an abstractionist.

In Floral Still Life from 1928 Lazzell uses planes, shapes and color to create the composition. The influence of Cubism is strong. She facets the flowers and reduces them to flat organic shapes. It is difficult to read the space, because she flattened the table and background as well. Everything appears to be sliding forward, with the forms almost merging into one another. Lazzell had the unique ability to capture the homespun quality of a flower arrangement in her paintings but she did so with a decidedly fresh and modern flourish. There is no mistaking her style, she was a singular American artist.