Blanche Lazzell artwork comes home after nationwide tour
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MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia University Art Museum will hold an opening ceremony to unveil "Blanche Lazzell: Becoming an American Artist" on Friday. This exhibition is the first from WVU to complete a nationwide tour and celebrates the WVU alum and printmaking prodigy Lazzell.
Lazzell graduated in 1905 from WVU with a fine arts degree and moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she co-founded Provincetown Printers. Lazell's career continued internationally in Paris, St. Augustine, Florida, and throughout Massachusetts.
Robert Bridges, museum curator and co-editor of Lazzell's collection, said the space is divided into seven sections amongst two gallery rooms. The gallery begins showcasing her early works and eventually graduating to organizing by subject matter, Bridges said.
The gallery also features some of Lazzell's painting and printing tools, handwritten notes and her life story printed on the walls.
She was known for her white-line style and block printmaking techniques, but experimented with fabric design and abstract art throughout her career. Bridges explained her process as extremely meticulous and unique to the United States.
"It's different from traditional Japanese wood blockprinting because it's not a separate block for every color," he said. "So, what a white line woodblock is is you take your drawing, transfer it to the wood block, and then you cut. So, she used a knife, cut a V-shape into the wood, and what that does is when you paint the surface, it allows that line to not hold any ink, so you see the white of the paper.
White line prints are a "purely American invention," Bridges said, and Lazzell learned the practice in 1916, one year after its creation.
"She was the one who carried it forward," Bridges said. "She was the one who taught other students how to do it, and she did it throughout her life, so now today she's recognized as the very best of the artists in the making."
Lazzell was inspired by nature and architecture, specifically "breaking down" scenery into colors, shapes and lines, Bridges said. Lazzell's collection features early depictions of iconic Morgantown locations, including Woodburn, Stewart Hall, the Wesley United Methodist Church, Lazell farm and local glass factories.
Bridges said that Lazzell's family was supportive of her artistic endeavors, but she still lived very frugally to support her ambitions.
"She worked on a really small budget," he said. "She didn't do a lot of extracurricular things. She was very serious about being an artist."
While Lazzell's work didn't get as much appreciation as it should have because of her gender, Bridges said her departure from Morgantown to Provincetown made it possible to teach others and be surrounded by like-minded artists.
Lazzell did a variety of commissioned and original work, but she never lost her personal style. Specifically during the Great Depression, Lazzell and other artists were government-mandated to create pieces with "American pride."
Lazzell "reinvigorated" herself after this period with new, colorful extractions, which she excelled at until her death in 1956.
Bridges said that this collection is one of the largest WVU has ever curated, hosting over 100 works for a single artist. The Art Museum of WVU has the largest collection of Lazzell's in the country, donated by her family.
Bridges is proud that the collection shows the progression of her work to the best of its abilities.
"I think the thing that will really stand out when you can get this body of work together to know that it spans her whole career is you see the quality of work and how she could move seamlessly from different types of paintings," Bridges said. "As she progressed, to see how she always stayed on the cutting edge of art ... like I said, I think the colors speak, the compositions speak to people."
Bridges encourages everyone to come to the free event.
"I think there's something for everyone, but I do feel that by seeing the quality of an artist's lifetime work, you can really appreciate and understand them a little better," he said. "She's a West Virginia favorite."
The collection will be on display starting Friday at 5 p.m., and lasts until Dec. 13. For more information, visit the Art Museum's website at artmuseum.wvu.edu.