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Nature morte cubiste c. 1919

Nature morte cubiste (Cubist Still Life ) corresponds to the last phase of María Blanchard's cubist period, as during the following years a fundamental directional change of a will take place. It is at this time that the painter abandons cubism and starts anew with a very characteristic figuration which she will never abandon. During the years following her cubist period, the painter began distancing herself from Gris, but maintained her friendship with Lhote y Lipchitz until the end of her life. Having broken her relationship with the merchant Léonce Rosenberg in 1922, she would once again go through many hardships until coming upon a circle of Belgian buyers who would improve her economic conditions. In any case, even in 1926 the painter will lament her sufferings--which will continue for the rest of her life--by writing the following to friend and protector, Jean Delgouffre, who was settled in Brussels: "I have a studio like a handkerchief where I can barely move, and I cannot come up with the 20,000 francs that I would need to build one, while Chagall buys a plot of land for 600,000 francs, Marie Laurencin has a castle and everyone goes by car."

This painting is one of her last cubist works in which the painter delights in creating pure contours and dense and smooth color, applied with a spatula. The fact that she painted on wood, in part, enabled her to achieve this smooth surface. This type of execution differs from the other two paintings from the Telefónica Collection in its enameled surface and in its strong linearity of composition. Lines and planes are sketched with geometric rigor in a similar way to that of Juan Gris, a constant reference for the Cantabrian painter. It possesses a great vitality of color and light. The objects unfold longitudinally upon a base which is built with three big white planes. The whole of the painting is tidy and cheerful due to the harmonic interaction of the elements and the constructive sense of the painting comes to be as much due to its lines as to the colorful structures and their straight and curved profiles.

María Blanchard establishes here an efficient dialog between straight and curved lines. The straight lines determine the shape of the planes and edges; the curved lines belong to the objects in the still life. The contrast between one and the other lends vitality to the painting and coincides with an observation made by Gleizes and Metzinger: "In short, the science of drawing consists of establishing relationships between curved lines and straight lines. A painting that only contains straight lines, or only curves, could not express life." Upon a pink background, the composition concentrates on the center of the canvas. María Blanchard respects the flat conception of cubist space, but at the same time she generates her own pictorial space--neither three-dimensional nor perspective--by superimposing large rectangular planes that gently spin, one on top of the other: the brown one rotates on the pink background, while, at the same time, the greenish-gray plane swirls upon it, and it is upon this last large, extended light plane, open like a book, where the objects unfold.

In the foreground of the composition the painter exquisitely utilizes luminous colors. She plays with various shades of white: light olive greens, bluish grays and siennas are accentuated by deep reds and blacks. The objects, according to the cubist method, are simultaneously described according to various positions and the whole of the painting maintains the capability of a "classical" balance that is detected in the cubist paintings of María Blanchard. There is a fine management of empty and full spaces; of the fragmented shapes and the totality of the work. The painter offers us a composition which is full of objects and planes, creating an uncluttered and open result. This is due to the pureness of the contours, but above all to the fullness of the voids or empty spaces, freeing the foreground of the composition. In it there are large free and vacant areas that counteract the greater complexity of the center of the composition. This can be seen in the transcription of a recommendation formulated by Gleizes and Metzinger: "Let us learn to create ample relaxed surfaces, whatever area in which the activity becomes exasperated with excessive contiguities."C.B.

ORIGIN
Léonce Rosenberg Collection, Paris / J. Grimar Collection / Jorge Mara Collection, Madrid / Guillermo de Osma Gallery, Madrid

BIBLIOGRAPHY
CAFFIN MADAULE, L., María Blanchard 1881-1932. Catalogue raisonné, I, London, DACS, 1992, vol. I, p. 199, rep. in color

(1) María Blanchard a Jean Delgouffre , November 27th, 1926, in CAFFIN MADAULE, L. , María Blanchard 1881-1932. Catalogue raisonné, 1, London, DACS, 1992, p. 82

(2) GLEIZES, A. y METZINGER, J., Sobre el Cubismo , Murcia, Surveyor's School, Yerba Bookstore, Province of Murcia and MOPU, 1986 p. 35.

(3) GLEIZES, A. y METZINGER, J., op. cit. , p. 35