1881 -1932 · Santander, Paris and Cubism

Fragmented shots, dense color and deep humanity make Maria Blanchard one of the most personal voices of European Cubism.

Maria Gutiérrez-Cueto Blanchard was born in Santander in 1881 and died in Paris in 1932. Suffering from the birth of a strong deformation of the spine, she suffered physical pain and social gaze all her life, but built a career entirely devoted to painting. After training in Madrid, she obtained a scholarship to Paris, where she met the avant-gardes. Established permanently in the French capital from 1916, she joined the Cubist community and became linked in particular to Juan Gris, Jacques Lipchitz and André Lhote. Her compositions from 1916 -1920 fragmented guitar, figure, table and interior into high planes, but color retained a carnal density which distinguishes it from a cold abstraction. Woman on guitar and Cubist composition show this alliance between intellectual construction and human presence. At the beginning of the 1920s, Blanchard gradually returned to more readable figures: women, children, maternity wards and popular characters. La Boulonnaise or La Bretonne retained Cubist solidity while expressing fatigue, dignity and solitude. Long marginalized in stories dominated by her male colleagues, she is today recognized as a major and singular figure of the European avant-garde. The "María Blanchard" selection notably compares Cubist Composition and Woman on the Guitar. His reading prioritize color.

Blanchard never dissolves the figure in Cubism: behind each colored plane remains a body, fatigue and a human presence.