María Blanchard was born on March 6, 1881 in Santander, Spain to a Polish-French mother and a Spanish father. Her mother was injured while she was pregnant and as a result María suffered from deformations of the spine and general posture, giving her what is often referred to as a hunchback. These problems would affect both María’s physical and mental well-being, along with provoking negative remarks and jeers from less than compassionate people. Despite such issues, Blanchard decided to pursue an artistic career and began her studies in 1903 in Madrid.
Paris and Cubism
María’s initial coursework was with artists Emilio Sala, Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor and Manuel Benedito, and eventually she continued on to Paris for further study. While María was never a big part of the Paris café scene, she did have the opportunity to meet Mexican artist Diego Rivera and fellow Spaniard Juan Gris. María soon found herself intrigued by the then burgeoning style of Cubism, which Gris and others like Pablo Picasso and sculptor Jacques Lipchitz were turning into a major avant-garde movement.
Painting in a Cubist manner required María to rethink traditional earlier teachings and view the world in a more precisely abstracted way. Fortunately, her studies at the Vitti Academy in Paris had helped her to free herself from too-formal academic methods and she successfully rose to the challenge. She was able to exhibit her more modern work, then upon returning to Spain she taught art lessons in Salamanca. Blanchard’s students were not always sympathetic to her appearance, however, and her time spent enduring their hostility was difficult and demeaning.
Abstract and Figurative
In 1916, María went back to Paris and reconnected with Gris and Lipchitz, also finding representation with the Léonce Rosenberg Gallery. Blanchard did enjoy a certain degree of success during her life and attracted patrons for her art, but there were also periods of financial stress and instability that took their toll on María’s already troubled health.
Blanchard’s subject matter was intriguingly diverse as she focused her "sensitive and unfettered imagination to the construction of pictures of a great purity, quick with a rhythm at once severe and supple…." (Modern French Painters, Raynal and Roeder). María pursued abstract and figurative styles, the 1928 Maternidad or Maternity being a fine example of her talent and unique perspective for the latter.
Later Years
Following the death of both Juan Gris and one of her most supportive Belgian patrons in 1927, María began to withdraw more and more from society. Tuberculosis and anxieties over money made matters worse, yet she still managed to paint and was even included in a 1930 South American exhibit along with the works of Gris, Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger.
Still, Blanchard was quite sick and by April of 1932, she had passed away. In retrospect, though María Blanchard surely held her own among the vanguard of her day, her name is not as well-known as her male contemporaries. Her achievements were nonetheless remarkable, and her artwork is included in the collections of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth University, the Fundación Telefónica, the Musée d'Art Moderne in Geneva and Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
Sources
- María Blanchard -- Fundación Telefónica
- Modern French Painters -- Maurice Raynal and Ralph Roeder (Arno Series of Contemporary Art, 1969)
