Below: Blanche Lazzell���s White Petunia, 1932
picked up during their time in Paris. They became part of the
spirit of Provincetown and part of town lore, their presence
immortalized by studio shop talk and shared memory.
In the exhibition catalogue, Robert Bridges��� essay Blanche
Lazzell and the Advancement of Modernism profiles the life and
work of one of the most important figures in Provincetown���s
art scene. Ms. Lazzell was honored as a pioneering modernists
in a Forum ���49 event in the summer of 1949. Her life and
work have come to be symbolic of much of what is unique
about the colony. She established her professional base in the
town in 1915 and remained resident there until her death in
1956.
Over time Lazzell experimented with Cubism and abstraction,
ultimately working out her own unique form of expression.
Writing about her painting Shell Bridges notes:
Here she successfully integrated a
Cubist composition with a still life by
applying the Cubist compositional
principles of movement, rhythm,
and asymmetrical space with a
more personal statement, using
flowers from her garden and a
shell collected from a nearby
Provincetown beach. The work
reveals her interest in applying
formal, mathematically established
proportions to create a carefully
controlled composition.
HYLAND
