Collection Landing page 3-2015

Blanche Lazzell

Date: 1919 (block cut), 1931 (printed)

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.32

Text Entries: Blanche Lazzell was born ninth in a family of ten children in rural West Virginia in 1878. By 1905 she had earned a remarkable three college degrees, and would continue to enjoy being a student throughout her life, both in Europe and the United States; as late as her sixties she studied abstract painting with artist and teacher Hans Hoffman. Lazzell is best known for color prints like Still Life, pulled from a single wood block, a process developed in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1915. A woodblock print executed in the traditional, Japanese-inspired manner requires a different block for each color; in contrast, the more expedient "white line technique" or "Provincetown print" utilizes a single block whose carved shapes, each colored individually, are separated by a groove that produces a white line on paper. Lazzell produced very few figurative works, concentrating instead on exploring geometric cubism and the bright coastal colors of her adopted home of Provincetown both through still lifes and landscapes.