Printmakers You Should Know: Blanche Lazzell

A few years ago I talked about B.J.O. Nordfeldt, who helped to develop white-line printmaking.  While Nordfeldt is often credited as the inventor of white-line printing, he was not the only artist to work in this medium during the early twentieth century. Today, we'll take a look at another pioneer in this medium, Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956).

Blanche Lazzell in Manhattan, ca. 1908. Image courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Lazzell

Lazzell was born and raised in West Virginia. She started her career as a teacher at the Red Oaks School in Ramsey, South Carolina. In 1901, she began studying art at West Virginia University. Although she graduated in 1905, she continued taking classes until 1909, learning different media such as ceramics, china decoration, and even gold etching. In 1908, she also started taking classes at the Art Students League in New York, with her teachers including William Merritt Chase and Kenyon Cox.

Blanche Lazzell, Petunias II, 1922, monotype on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/petunias-ii-32502

In 1912, Lazzell traveled to Europe for the first time, taking classes in Paris at such schools as the Academie Julian and the Academie Delecluse. The one she preferred most, however, was the Academie Moderne, which was closely affiliated with the avant-garde artists of the period. She traveled to Europe again during the 1920s. This time she would focus her studies on Cubism and geometric abstraction, working with artists such as Fernand Leger and Albert Gleizes.

Blanche Lazzell, Untitled (Abstract Sketch #1), 1924, pencil on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/untitled-abstract-sketch-1-31660

Blanche Lazzell, Untitled (Abstract Sketch #5), 1924, pencil on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/untitled-abstract-sketch-5-31664

Lazzell first encountered the Provincetown art colony in 1915, which was an especially popular location for artists escaping World War I in Europe. The following summer, she learned about white-line printing from Oliver Chaffee, who in turn had learned the technique from Nordfeldt. In contrast to traditional color woodblock printing, which entails carving each color on a separate block, white-line printing enables you to print everything on a single block. Known for its flat, decorative quality, white-line printing proved especially popular among modernists looking to dismantle art's association with naturalism. Lazzell would spend some time at the Byrdcliffe colony in 1918, studying with Andrew Dasburg and William Zorach, but she subsequently settled in Provincetown, converting an old fishing shack into a small home. Throughout her career, she continued pushing her technique by studying with different artists and teachers, including Hans Hofmann during the 1930s.

Blanche Lazzell, Still Life, 1919. Image courtesy of https://www.pinterest.co.uk/thatobject/art-blanche-lazzell/

Blanche Lazzell, Painting #12, 1929, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of https://www.paam.org/collection/lazzell-314-pa56/

Blanche Lazzell, Justice, mural 1934. Image courtesy of http://wvutoday-archive.wvu.edu/n/2015/10/15/art-up-close-public-invited-to-view-blanche-lazzell-mural-depicting-morgantown.html

As an artist, Lazzell worked in several different media, including printmaking, hooked rugs, and painting, even completing a mural for the Mongolia County Courthouse in West Virginia under the Public Works of Art Project. What she is best known for today, however, are her innovative white-line woodcuts. In lieu of ink, she preferred French watercolors for her prints, giving her work a light, painterly quality that offers a striking counterbalance to her strongly angular, geometric compositions.

Blanche Lazzell, Tulips, 1920, white-line color woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of http://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/detail/18247/Blanche-Lazzell

Blanche Lazzell, The Monangahela at Morgantown, 1939, white-line color woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of https://www.bookroomartpress.co.uk/product/lazzell-blanche-the-monongahela-at-morgantown/

Blanche Lazzell, Provincetown Backyards, 1926, white-line color woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of http://www.craigstarr.com/exhibitions/blanche-lazzell?view=slider#2

Taking everything she had learned about modern art, she created more than 100 innovative prints between the 1930s and 1950s. Highlighting the medium's flat, decorative quality, she created bold, colorful compositions, encompassing still life, landscape, and other genres. During the 1920s, she even ventured into nonobjective work, creating designs replete with bright colors, patterns, and a variety of shapes. I find this pretty remarkable for an American printmaker of this period. For all his own innovations, even Nordfeldt tended to stick with representative subject matter. Yet here is Lazzell, creating compositons based on visual form alone. Although she would focus primarily, though not exclusively, on representational work from the 1930s onward, you can still see the influence of geometric abstraction in her prints.

Blanche Lazzell, Non-Objective (B), 1926, printed 1928, white-line color woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/non-objective-b-14462

As a printmaker, she wasn't particularly concerned with creating exact duplicates within in edition. Rather, she varied her color and brushwork to create unique works within an edition, similar to Nordfeldt's approach to printmaking. Note, for instance, the differences in color in these two prints:

Blanche Lazzell, The Seine Boat, 1927, printed 1933, white-line color woodcut. Image courtesy of https://americanart.si.edu/artist/blanche-lazzell-2842

Through the use of different colors, Lazzell suggests not only different times of day or season, but also creates distinct visual rhythms for our eyes to follow. Like a theme and variation in a piece of music, Lazzell uses the same basic template of the printing block to establish continuity while incorporating different colors and pigment opacities to highlight the variety within the composition.

Blanche Lazzell, The Monongahela, 1936, white-line color woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of http://www.craigstarr.com/exhibitions/blanche-lazzell?view=slider#6

Despite her significance as an American abstract artist, Lazzell's work was largely forgotten after her death. In recent years, however, her work has been receiving greater scholarly attention, and for good reason. Here is a woman who not only studied with practically all of the greats when it comes to early 20th-century art, but was a pioneer in both abstraction and relief printmaking. She infused her practice with Cubism, Fauvism, and other significant movements, but far from a mere imitator, she successfully established her own creative voice. She is definitely a printmaker you should know.

Blanche Lazzell, Blue Jug, 1937, white-line color woodcut on paper. Image courtesy of https://www.bookroomartpress.co.uk/product/lazzell-blanche-blanche-lazzell-blue-jug/

Learn more here:

https://americanart.si.edu/artist/blanche-lazzell-2842

http://www.michaelrosenfeldart.com/artists/blanche-lazzell-1878-1956

http://www.provincetownartistregistry.com/L/lazzell_blanche.html

http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/08/17/the_blossoming_of_abstract_artist_blanche_lazzell_on_display_at_berta_walker_gallery/

And if you're interested in a book on Lazzell, you're in luck: https://www.amazon.com/BLANCHE-LAZZELL-LIFE-AMERICAN-MODERNIST/dp/093705884X