María Blanchard (Santander, 1881-Paris 1932) is the great lady of Spanish Cubism, even though in her oscillating career she returned to figuration. ‘Maria Blanchard. Painter despite Cubism’ is the title of the exhibition that the Picasso Museum in Malaga opens this Tuesday to … free from ghosts, demons and misunderstandings the relegated figure of this Cantabrian painter, mistreated in Spain, consecrated in Paris, who refused to return to her country and forged a recognizable style in just twenty years of career.
It is a retrospective with 85 pieces including oil paintings, pastels and drawings, some never exhibited, that the Malaga museum offers until September 29. Curated by José Lebrero Stals, it covers in chronological order all the artistic stages of Blanchard, -María Gutiérrez-Cueto in her passport-, one of the great and misunderstood Spanish creators of the 20th century. With her experimental desire and technical mastery, this early cubist earned the respect of her contemporaries in Paris and became a reference figure of the movement from which she later departed. .
In just five years of Cubism he experimented with fragmentation and multiple perspectives in his daring and singular compositions and “contributed in a very notable way,” highlights José Lebrero, director of the Malaga museum until last year and promoter of the exhibition.
It highlights “the symbolic richness, social commitment, formal complexity and innovative nature of Blanchard’s work.” A work that “without a doubt was not sufficiently valued in a cultural context that at that time believed in artistic female inferiority.” “In 2024 there are still enough reasons to insist, once again, on showing her work in detail, exhibiting it again almost a hundred years after her death,” says Lebrero.
Images from the exhibition.
© Picasso Museum Málaga
Committed to her particular way of living and creating until the end, Blanchard transcended gender stereotypes. She went to Paris in 1909 to study with Hermén Anglada i Camarasa, María Vassilieff and Kees van Dongen. There she rubbed shoulders with Picasso, Juan Gris, Braque, Diego Rivera and André Lothe, who welcomed her into the group of avant-garde artists and valued her talent in a male world. In France she obtained the recognition that was denied her in Spain.
Like Frida Kahlo, the severe kyphoscoliosis that deformed her back marked her life. “Her passage through Cubism produced the best works of the movement, apart from those of Picasso,” said Diego Rivera, a brilliant Mexican painter whom Blanchard loved without being reciprocated. Her cubist phase is the most sought after and accounts for almost half of the exhibition, almost 40 works.
“The combination of geometric elements and a skillful simultaneity of points of view give a unique character to both the most abstract compositions of his early period and his post-Cubist figurative compositions, made from 1920 onwards,” says the curator.
Feminine
Her thematic repertoire of maternity, domestic scenes, children or working women, “reflects a heartfelt feminine concern for the vulnerability of the human condition and the evocative power of emotions.” Some aspects that she emphasizes with impeccable technical mastery and an evident interest in the history and tradition of European painting.
One of the stars of the exhibition is ‘La Boulonnaise’ (‘The Bolognese’), a canvas painted by Blanchard in 1922 and whose purchase by the Prado Museum three years ago reactivated the old controversy over the possible violation of the decree established in 1881 , the year of Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s birth, as a blurred border between the collections of the Prado and the Reina Sofía.
Blanchard is an “essential” figure for Reina Sofía. With 15 works by the Cantabrian painter in its collection, in 2012 the museum dedicated a large retrospective to Blanchard curated by María José Salazar and co-edited the catalog raisonné of her works – 500 memos – in which ‘The Bolognese’ did not appear. . The Prado acquired it for 70,000 euros thanks to the inheritance of Carmen Sánchez, a professor who donated 800,000 euros to the museum to acquire and restore works by her.
There are other notable loans, such as ‘The Communicator’ (1914), ‘The Lady with the Fan’ (1913-1916), and ‘The Card Caster’ (1924–1925). ‘Luncheon’ (1922) and ‘The Girl with the Bracelet’ (1922-1923) had never been exhibited, and the pastel ‘Young Woman at the Open Window’ (1924) was exhibited for the first time outside the United Kingdom, after its acquisition by Courtlaud London in the 1930s.
“The art system was condescending and pious and ignored Blanchard’s work, and this exhibition was necessary for museum and poetic justice with a great artist who was neither muse, lover nor wife of the geniuses of her time,” claims the curator about “the best painter of cubism without a doubt.”
The exhibition joins the exhibitions that the Malaga museum has held in recent years, vindicating the work of women artists. The art gallery once again commits to the work of highlighting 20th century artists, after the exhibitions dedicated to Sophie Taeuber-Arp (2009), Hilma af Klint (2013), Louise Bourgeois (2015); We are completely free. Women artists and surrealism (2017) and Paula Rego (2022).
