The first monographic exhibition of her work in nearly two decades, Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist traces the artist’s pioneering approaches to abstraction in the United States. After earning a degree in fine art at West Virginia University, Blanche Lazzell pursued an education that was increasingly international and avant-garde. In 1907, she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York under the tutelage of William Merritt Chase and studied alongside classmates such as Georgia O’Keeffe. She spent 1912 in Paris, taking classes at the progressive Académie Julian and Académie Moderne headed by Charles Rosen and Charles Guérin. Upon her return to the United States the following year, she joined the vibrant artists’ colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, becoming a student at the Cape Cod School of Art where she was exposed to Fauvist color and technique. Lazzell made a second trip to Paris in 1923 to study with the Cubists Fernand Léger, André Lhote, and Albert Gleizes and, more than a decade later, she spent a year in the Provincetown studio of the Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann.

Lazzell’s time in Provincetown also revealed her innate ingenuity as a printmaker. Characterized by their flat, simplified forms and Japanese aesthetic, her white-line and color woodcuts earned her critical appreciation. They also became fertile testing grounds for Lazzell’s experimentation with the geometric abstraction she encountered in France and championed at home.

Featuring more than sixty paintings, prints, and unique works on paper largely drawn from the collection of the Art Museum of West Virginia University, this exhibition is a testament to a visionary female artist who translated European modernisms into a uniquely American—and highly personal—art form.

Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Modernist is organized by the Art Museum of West Virginia University with generous support provided by Art Bridges.

Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878–1956)
Church Around the Corrner, 1949
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 3/16 in.
Art Museum of West Virginia University Collection, acquired through Frances Sellers
© Estate of Blanche Lazzell

Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878–1956)
Hollyhock, 1917
Oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 18 1/8 in.
Art Museum of West Virginia University Collection, gift of Nancy Watkins in memory of James F. McKinley and Nancy W. McKinley
© Estate of Blanche Lazzell

Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878–1956)
Painting X, 1927
Oil on canvas, 50 3/16 x 36 1/8 in.
Art Museum of West Virginia University Collection
© Estate of Blanche Lazzell

Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878–1956)
Planes II, block cut 1952, printed 1952
Color woodblock print, 14 x 12 in.
Art Museum of West Virginia University Collection, gift of Harvey D. Peyton
© Estate of Blanche Lazzell

Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878–1956)
Shell, 1930
Oil on canvas, 16 3/16 x 20 in.
Art Museum of West Virginia University Collection
© Estate of Blanche Lazzell

Blanche Lazzell (American, 1878–1956)
The White Petunia, block cut 1932, printed 1954
Color woodblock print, 14 ½ x 12 5/8 in.
Art Museum of West Virginia University Collection, Gift of James C. and Janet G. Reed
Estate of Blanche Lazzell