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Nature morte cubiste , c. 1917

The cubist art of María Blanchard developed throughout a relatively short period of time, from 1916 to 1920. According to Gaya Nuño, this cubist phase brought about a "liberation" for her, which could be understood to mean that the painter could free herself of the rigor an academic influence and the miscomprehension towards new initiatives that were weighing down cultural Spanish environments. Azcoaga, along the same lines, fine-tuned the liberation that cubism produced in her by referring to it as a disciplined exercise of formal purification that would constitute the foundation for her subsequent pictorial conception.

Campoy, on the other hand, referred to María Blanchard as a "humanizer" of cubism , while V. Bozal pointed out something that, throughout her work, she shared with Juan Gris: a vein of classicism that was never lost. When she began her cubist period, María Blanchard already had a trajectory. In addition to her studies in Madrid with Emilio Sata, Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor y Manuel Bendito, we must also add her participation in national Fine Arts expositions, where she earned certain recognition. And thanks to scholarships granted by the local government in Santander, she was able to live in Paris on two occasions; the first in 1909 and the second from 1912 to 1914. It was in 1916, however, when she became permanently established in the French capital where she would begin her cubist phase, forerunner to her most mature figurative works. Before her third and definitive trip to Paris, in 1915, María Blanchard had participated in the exposition of Integral Painters, organized by Gómez de la Serna: an event in which diverse innovative artists, among whom besides her gathered Diego Rivera, whose painting at the time was influenced by cubism.

María Blanchard had a gradually increasing involvement with this movement: first in 1912, as a result of her second trip to Paris when she met Juan Gris, who would be a fundamental influence on her painting. On a second occasion, two years later, she came in contact with Rivera and with Lipchitz, whom she had met along with Gris, but on this second occasion, the Lithuanian sculptor had already begun his cubist phase . Nonetheless, in 1914 María Blanchard had not yet immersed herself into the cubist aesthetic and was showing greater interest in a very personal style of figurative art, of which one of her best exponents is La Communiante (The Communicant, Madrid, private collection). But this line of work did not fully come to light until the cubist cycle had ended, in 1920-21, when she exposed this painting in Paris and earned considerable praise, paving the way to her mature style in the context of a return to order.

The trip to Paris in 1916, during which the painter had to face financial difficulties, turned out to be more than a change of location. With it came cubist experimentation and her attribution to the unsettled world of the Parisian avant-garde. María Blanchard found herself at a serious disadvantage with respect to her colleagues. Most of these disadvantages were derived from her physical problems, which always produced a great deal of suffering as well as the rejection of many people in view of her deformity.

Within her own cubist language, María Blanchard was backed by a supportive and strengthened relationship with Gris, Lipchitz, and André Lhote. It was the work of Juan Gris, with whom she shared a continuous friendship and communication until his death in 1927, although in the final years their relationship had cooled down considerably. Nonetheless, a tight association with Juan Gris's work resulted in a cubist phase which ended up being less valued than what she was later to produce. The criticism began with Kahnweiler, who considered her, more than anything, a follower of Gris, and ended with Gabriel Ferrater, for whom her cubism represented a phase consisting of stepping backward and of assuming a pictorial concept which was "alien" to her own sensitivity .

Léonce Rosenberg, the Parisian merchant who would buy her entire cubist production in 1920, recognized the influence of Juan Gris on her, but also pointed out a characteristic that is exclusive to her work: "a brilliance, a composition, a more human and less scientific tonality." María Blanchard knew how to assimilate the teachings of different cubist proposals: from Picasso and Braque, to Lhote, Gleizes and Metzinger, and from analytical to synthetic cubism, in whose territory she decided to explore, using the "flat and colorful architectures " of Juan Gris as a reference.

A characteristic trait of María Blanchard is her personal way of assimilating cubist proposals. This is seen in the clear and structured choreography of her shapes, which never become undone, nor are they transformed into abstractions. The color utilized in her compositions also stands out as a personal element, in this way highlighting the importance of her training with Anglada and even more so with Kees van Dogen in Paris in 1909. The "contained colorful richness" is an esteemed aspect of her cubist compositions and, although softened, some of her lively colors evoke a chromatism originating from fauve and some derivative chromatic sources.

Nature morte cubiste is a fine example of these aspects of María Blanchard's cubism. The composition responds to a genre which is often used by cubists, but which could have been previously influenced by one of her first teachers in Madrid, Manuel Benedito: the still life. Bottle, compote pot, a piece of furniture upon which they are placed, constitute the theme for this small canvas of such great balance. The bottle, according to the neologism bottleism that Ramón Gómez de la Serna used in his isms, is also widely used by the cubists, "because it is a clear object made of a cylinder and a sphere, while at the same time being an object of fraternal familiarity." Ramón, who knew María Blanchard and dedicated some memorable pages to her, was accurate in pointing out the geometric characteristics that bottles and glasses took on, objects that represent a cubist investigation par excellence. In this painting, the bottle lays down a vertical pattern, almost column-like, that balances oblique lines and curves which predominate the composition. As in other paintings by Blanchard, the bottle is divided into two parts, one light and one dark.

María Blanchard places her motif upon a background consisting of two large dark planes--black and brown--that offer maximum contrasts in light which are obtained by using whites, yellows and light grays. The thickness of the paint, dense but smooth, allows us to see elaborated colors, broken up by mixtures that give plastic consistency to each plane. There is a tactile element in the treatment of surface textures of whites, making them seem detached from the background, pushing them forward. A plastic quality and a contrast in light that make us value Gómez de la Serna's comment about Blanchard claiming that he was: "beginning to suspect that Zurbarán could have been the secret teacher of the cubist painter." Intermediate nuances, other darker grays and areas of intense red, unfold between the lightness and the background. In order to accent, the painter uses colors that are even more saturated, that measure out the exact amount in order to provide chromatic intensity: small emerald green planes and other violet ones which are even smaller. In this color play the contrast of complementary elements is subtly presented, as María Blanchard established a well-measured relationship between the red and green, and yellow and violet pairs.

Kahnweiler points out in the work of Juan Gris what is referred to as his pictorial rhymes: shapes that are repeated like an echo, one coming from the other, even though they comprise different objects, thereby establishing poetic links between diverse things . In this still life by María Blanchard this can also be observed: the profile of the mouth of the bottle is repeated on a larger scale and is inverted at the foot of the fruit bowl, its upper curve corresponds to the curve of the bottle below which closes the composition.

On the other hand, the sketch is a structuring element that is fundamental to her work, always praised by critics and qualified by some as energetic and expressive, and by others as plastic and volumetric. It is quite true that since her formative years, drawing constituted an essential discipline, although in cubist works lines are reduced to some contours or descriptive details, and what pertains to the sketch is especially formed by plastic and chromatic drawing. María Blanchard draws shapes, clearly profiling their planes, looking to contrast them with the effects of light vs. dark or color vs. color. The broken profiles of the planes always find a pure definition, structuring themselves with clarity. In this way, we are speaking of a drawing that, without the use of lines, builds profiles and separates shapes, although to the same extent color and light contribute to this separation and construction, a fundamental Cézanne-like concept that cubism, especially in its synthetic phase, had clearly made its own.C.B.

Signed in the lower right corner: "M. BLANCHARD"

Sala Barcino, Barcelona / Llovet Collection, Barcelona / Guillermo de Osma Gallery, Madrid

Arco 99 , Madrid, 1999, p. 251, rep.

(1) Gaya Nuño, J. A ., Arte del siglo XX , Madrid, Plus-Ultra, 1958, p. 137 (Ars Hispaniae, XXII).

(2) Azcoaga, E. , «María Blanchard, deudora del Cubismo» en María Blanchard 1881-1932 , Madrid, M.E.A.C., 1982, p. 70.

(3) Campoy, A. M ., María Blanchard , Madrid, Gavar, 1981, p. 57.

(4) Bozal, V ., Pintura y escultura españolas del siglo XX , Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1993, vol. I, p. 305 (Summa Artis, XXXVI).

(5) In the summer of 1914 they spent some time in Mallorca with Angelina Beloff, friend of María Blanchard and companion of Diego Rivera, and Gregoire Landau.

(6) Ferrater, G ., Sobre pintura , Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1981, p. 321.

(7) LEONCE ROSENBERG'S text, en Caffin Madaule, L., Catalogue raisonné del oeuvres de María Blanchard, London, DACS, 1992, p. 15.

(8) Kahnweiler, D.-H ., El camino hacia el Cubismo , Barcelona, Quaderns Crema, 1997, p. 82.

(9) Salazar, Mª J., «Aproximación a la vida y a la obra de María Blanchard» en María Blanchard, 1881-1932, Madrid, MEAC, 1982, p. 18.

(10) Los ismos de Ramón Gómez de la Serna y un apéndice circense , Madrid, MNCARS, 2002, p. 312.

(11) Texto de Ramón Gómez de la Serna en María Blanchard 1881-1932 , Madrid, Biosca Gallery, 1976, p. 93.