MARÍA BLANCHARD. A PAINTER IN SPITE OF CUBISM

 

Museo Picasso Málaga 30 April to 29 September 2024 Tomorrow, 30 April, sees the opening of the exhibition María Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism. Through its 85 works this retrospective will offer a chronological survey of the different stages in the artistic life of the painter María Blanchard (Santander 1881 - Paris, 1932). Blanchard was the first woman in Spain to adopt the Cubist style and to experiment with fragmentation and multiple perspectives in her compositions, for which reason her contribution to the modern movement is considered particularly important. Combined with her technical mastery and the respect she earned among her contemporaries, this has made Blanchard a figure of reference.  Sponsored by Fundación Unicaja, the exhibition is the latest in the series which the Museo Picasso Málaga has organised over the years with the aim of drawing attention to the work of women artists. Maria Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism © Museo Picasso Málaga To download image, click on it This retrospective organised by the Museo Picasso Málaga presents a chronological survey of the different phases in the artistic life of the Santander-born painter María Blanchard (Santander, 1881 - Paris, 1932), emphasising the symbolic richness, social commitment, formal complexity and innovative character of her work, produced during a relatively short career. Blanchard’s output was undoubtedly not sufficiently appreciated in the cultural context of the time, which saw women artists as inferior. A painter committed to her particular way of living and creating until the end, she transcended the limits of gender stereotypes.   Blanchard contributed to the modern movement as the first woman in Spain to systematically employ the Cubist approach in order to construct images. The combination of geometrical motifs and a skilled simultaneity of viewpoints give a unique character to the most abstract images of her early period and also to her Post-Cubist figurative compositions produced after 1920. Blanchard’s thematic repertoire of mother and child and domestic scenes, children and working women reflect a deeply felt concern for the vulnerability of the human condition and the evocative power of the emotions. She emphasised these aspects through an impeccable technical mastery and an evident interest in the history and tradition of European painting. Curated by José Lebrero Stals and sponsored by Fundación Unicaja, this retrospective brings together 85 oil paintings, pastels and drawings by a Spanish painter considered the grande dame of Cubism. Notable among the works loaned for this event are Girl at her First Communion (1914), Lady with a Fan (1913-16), La Boulonnaise (1922-23), and The Fortune Teller (1924-25). In addition, the pastel on paper Girl at an open Window (1924) is exhibited for the first time outside of the United Kingdom since it was acquired by the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in the 1930s. The exhibition also features two works by Blanchard never previously exhibited: Lunch (1922) and Girl with a Bracelet (1922-23).   Maria Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism © Museo Picasso Málaga To download image, click on it MARÍA BLANCHARD, A SPANIARD IN PARIS María Blanchard was born in Santander in 1881, the same year as Pablo Picasso, and moved to Paris at the outset of the 20th century, where both would always remain outsiders. This courageous, intelligent woman, who achieved great renown among her fellow painters in Paris, was nonetheless little esteemed in historical accounts of the avant-gardes during the first half of the last century, in the context of an art system dominated by a type of masculinity that silenced and excluded her. José Lebrero Stals, the exhibition’s curator, has stated that: “In 2024 there are still more than sufficient reasons to insist on once again presenting her work retrospectively and in detail, exhibiting it again nearly 100 years after her death.”   The fact that Blanchard was from a wealthy family and had been educated in an intellectual environment meant that at the age of twenty-two she was allowed to embark on studying art in Madrid. She began to produce portraits of loved ones in an academic style; appropriate subjects in that conservative artistic environment. Blanchard travelled to Paris, the international capital of modern art, for the first time in 1909 where she discovered the aesthetic radicalism of the avant-gardes and established contacts with some of the key figures of the new art: Juan Gris, Diego de Rivera, Vicente Huidobro, Marie Vassilieff and Picasso himself, among others.   In 1915 the writer and activist Ramón Gómez de la Serna invited Blanchard to participate in Madrid in Los pintores íntegros, the provocative, first Cubist exhibition which was closed by the authorities ten days after it opened. The fierce, damning and misogynist criticism which the artist’s work received, as well as her disappointment at the artistic wilderness of Spain at that period led the artist to settle permanently in Paris that summer in a personal quest for an atmosphere of innovation and artistic experimentation. It was at this point that she ceased to sign her work as María Gutiérrez or Gutiérrez-Cueto and to use Blanchard, her mother’s French surname. In Paris she firmly allied herself to the Cubist artists, standing out within the movement with her own artistic personality. That crucial part of her pictorial legacy, although created during a short period, made Blanchard one of the most important international figures of the Cubist movement.   During the 1920s María Blanchard’s career continued to evolve towards a Post-Cubist phase which centred on the human condition and the world of women and children, expressed through her meticulous technical mastery and a scholarly interest in the tradition of Spanish, French and Flemish painting. Her pictorial output moved towards a very distinctive figuration which, as evident in the exhibition María Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism, also brought her prestige and renown. The Museo Picasso Málaga is once more affirming its commitment to drawing attention to women artists of the 20th century, following previous exhibitions devoted to Sophie Taeuber-Arp (2009), Hilma af Klint (2013), Louise Bourgeois (2015), We are truly Free. Women artists and Surrealism (2017), and Paula Rego (2022).   Nearly 50 museums and major collections are loaning works for this exhibition, notably the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Santander y Cantabria, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, the Musée de Beaux-Arts de Nantes, and the Sprengel Museum in Hanover; in addition to lenders such as Colección Masaveu, Colección Zorrilla Lequerica, Galería Guillermo de Osma, Colección Abelló and a large number of private collections. The exhibition is sponsored by Fundación Unicaja. Maria Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism © Museo Picasso Málaga To download image, click on it CATALOGUE AND CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME In conjunction with the exhibition the Museo Picasso Málaga has published the catalogue María Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism in both an English and a Spanish edition. It has more than 200 fully illustrated pages and texts by José Lebrero Stals, Andrea Weiss, Griselda Pollock, Xon de Ros, and Paula J. Birnbaum. It also features a biography compiled by Dr María José Salazar, a specialist in the work of María Blanchard, and short extracts of texts by Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Gerardo Diego, José Bergamín, André Lothe, and Federico García Lorca. The publication is available from the MPM Bookshop or by ordering by e-mail from lalibreria@mpicassom.org   Once again, during the months when the exhibition is on display the Museo Picasso Málaga will be offering an ongoing programme of related cultural activities. These include a series of encounters which will benefit from the presence of the exhibition’s curator, José Lebrero, and of acknowledged experts such as the art historian María José Salazar; Xon de Ros, professor at the University of Oxford; and Paula Birnbaum, professor of art history and museum studies at the University of San Francisco, among others. There will also be a new cycle of Conversations with..., which will offer a guided tour of the exhibition led by specialists such as Belén Torregrosa, associate professor at the University of Navarre, and Lorea Alfaro, artist and teacher in the Fine Arts faculty of the University of the Basque Country.   For young visitors, the museum’s department of cultural and educational activities will be offering a puppet show and story-telling-session on 25 May, as well as its habitual summer workshops in July, on this occasion based on the exhibition María Blanchard. A Painter in Spite of Cubism. For the educational community there will be participative visits aimed at different educational levels, teacher training sessions, and the project “Blanchard today”, which aims to generate synergies between the museum and young people in collaboration with the faculty of Art History at the University of Malaga.

Paris 1874 Inventing impressionism

Musée d’Orsay

March 26th to July 14th, 2024

National Gallery of Art, Washington

September 8, 2024 to January 20, 2025

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Impression, Soleil Levant, 1872
Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet
Don Eugène et Victorine Donop de Monchy (donateurs)
© musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Studio Baraja SLB

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What exactly happened in Paris in that spring of 1874, and what sense should we make today of an exhibition that has become legendary? “Paris 1874. The Impressionist Moment” seeks to trace the advent of an artistic movement that emerged in a rapidly changing world.

 

“Paris 1874” reviews the circumstances that led these 31 artists (only seven of whom are well-known across the world today) to join forces and exhibit their works together. The period in question had a post-war climate, following two conflicts: the Franco-German War of 1870, and then a violent civil war. In this context of crisis, artists began to rethink their art and explore new directions. A little “clan of rebels” painted scenes of modern life, and landscapes sketched in the open air, in pale hues and with the lightest of touches. As one observer noted, “What they seem above all to be aiming at is an impression”.

Auguste Renoir
The Theater Box, 1874
oil on canvas
framed: 106.6 x 91 x 12.3 cm (41 15/16 x 35 13/16 x 4 13/16 in.)
original canvas: 80 x 63.5 cm (31 1/2 x 25 in.)
The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)
Photo © The Courtauld

On April 15, 1874, an exhibition an exhibition by the “Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, etc.” opened at the Parisian studio of the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines. It was a defiant response to the official, government-sponsored annual exhibition known as the Paris Salon. The first exhibition of these Société anonyme artists included works by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Paul Cézanne, later known as impressionists. This now-legendary event is often considered the birth of modernist painting and remains a key moment in the history of Western art.

Honoring the 150th anniversary of the first impressionist exhibition, Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment brings together some 130 paintings, works on paper, prints, sculptures, and photographs to explore the various ways that artists responded to a city recovering from the violence of war and enormous political and social upheaval.

What exactly happened in Paris in the spring of 1874, and what meaning can we attach to the emergence of this artistic movement? Works shown at the first impressionist exhibition will be put into perspective alongside paintings and sculptures displayed at the official 1874 Salon. This unprecedented juxtaposition will help us understand the visual shock that visitors experienced when first encountering the works of the impressionists.

The exhibition will also explore the circumstances that led more than 30 artists to defy the official system of the Salon, with its judges, prizes, and government approval, by showing their art independently. At the time, France was struggling to recover from its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the siege of Paris and the violence of civil war. Following these crises, artists were rethinking their art, discovering their voices, and exploring new directions.

Eager for autonomy and challenging an academic system that often rejected them, Monet, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, and their colleagues came together as a société anonyme coopérative, an “anonymous cooperative society.” They exhibited their work in the very heart of Paris, in a photographer’s studio. Scenes of modern life and plein-air landscapes were displayed alongside more conventional paintings, engravings, and sculptures. It represented a common desire to pursue art unconstrained by the established order.

That order will be evoked with a selection of paintings and sculptures from the official Salon, held in the massive Palais de l’Industrie. This annual event, the highlight of the season, featured meticulously crafted mythological, religious, and historical paintings that received government and academic approval. Comparisons between the first impressionist exhibition and the Salon will give us a fresh look at artistic divisions of the day.

Above all, Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment will invite visitors to consider what constituted an impressionist work. What made it so different and specific? These questions led Louis Leroy, one of the first exhibition’s critics, to coin the term “impressionist”—originally meant sarcastically—that came to describe an artistic movement that would reshape our understanding of modern art. A century and a half after its emergence, it is time to take stock of impressionism and reexamine its radicalism.

Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment will include works exhibited at Nadar’s studio as well as paintings and sculptures by established artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Antonin Mercié, who were celebrated at the Salon that year. Modern Paris, with its newly built streets and boulevards, entertainment venues, and performances will also be evoked through works by Renoir, Degas, Monet, Eva Gonzalès, and Édouard Manet, shown either at the first impressionist exhibition or submitted to the Salon. Also included will be works by lesser-known impressionist and Salon artists, some of them recently rediscovered and shown for the first time in this context. Finally, the exhibition will feature Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant)—a seminal painting in the history of impressionism.

“This exhibition will closely reconstitute the very first impressionist exhibition,” noted Christophe Leribault, President of Orsay and Orangerie Museums, Paris. “It will invite visitors to immerse themselves in this decisive moment, a major rupture in the history of art, and help us understand its emergence and grasp its radicality.”

“Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment offers a unique opportunity to explore the origins of one of the most popular and well-known movements in Western art,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “We are pleased to partner with the Musée d’Orsay to share this fascinating story with our American audience.”

Exhibition Organization and Support

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Exhibition Tour

Musée d’Orsay, Paris, March 25–July 14, 2024
National Gallery of Art, Washington, September 8, 2024–January 19, 2025

Exhibition Curators

The exhibition is curated in Paris by Sylvie Patry, General Curator of Heritage/Galerie Mennour, Paris, and by Anne Robbins, Curator of Painting, Musée d'Orsay; and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, by Mary Morton, curator and head of the department of French paintings, and by Kimberly Jones, curator of 19th-century French paintings.

Images

Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle
The Salon of 1874, 1874
oil on canvas
100 x 81.5 cm (39 3/8 x 32 1/16 in.)
framed: 124.5 x 105 cm (49 x 41 5/16 in.)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, gift of Galerie Ary Jan and Segoura Fine Art, 2023
Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crepy

Zacharie Astruc
Woman Asleep in an Artist’s Studio, 1871
watercolor
56 x 42 cm (22 1/16 x 16 9/16 in.)
Collection Musée de l'Opera de Vichy
Photo: Musée de l'Opera de Vichy

Auguste Lançon
Dead in Line!, 1873
oil on canvas
overall: 160 x 210 cm (63 x 82 11/16 in.)
framed: 197 x 250 x 13.5 cm (77 9/16 x 98 7/16 x 5 5/16 in.)
Musée de la Princerie de Verdun (81.1.401), on loan to the Musée departemental de la Guerre de 1870 & de l'Annexion (DG2009.1.1), Gravelotte
Photo: © Departement de la Moselle, MdG1870&A, Rebourg

Jean-Leon Gerôme
L’Éminence Grise, 1873
oil on canvas
overall: 68.6 x 101 cm (27 x 39 3/4 in.)
framed: 111.1 x 142.9 x 12.1 cm (43 3/4 x 56 1/4 x 4 3/4 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Susan Cornelia Warren, 1903
Photograph © [date of publication] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jules Breton
The Cliff, 1874
oil on canvas
overall: 163.8 x 252.7 cm (64 1/2 x 99 1/2 in.)
Eric Weider Collection

Henri Fantin-Latour
Still Life with Torso and Flowers, 1874
oil on canvas
116 x 90 cm (45 11/16 x 35 7/16 in.)
framed: 146 x 117 x 10 cm (57 1/2 x 46 1/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden
Photo: Gothenburg Museum of Art / Hossein Sehatlou

Édouard Manet
The Railway, 1873
oil on canvas
93.3 x 111.5 cm (36 3/4 x 43 7/8 in.)
framed: 113 x 132.7 x 5.4 cm (44 1/2 x 52 1/4 x 2 1/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother, Louisine W. Havemeyer

Felix Bracquemond
The Divan (after Edouard Manet), 1867
etching
plate: 21.59 x 32.39 cm (8 1/2 x 12 3/4 in.)
sheet: 29.85 x 40.64 cm (11 3/4 x 16 in.)
framed: 40.64 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
Samuel Putnam Avery Collection, Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Berthe Morisot
The Cradle, 1872
oil on canvas
framed: 80 x 71 cm (31 1/2 x 27 15/16 in.)
unframed: 56 x 46.5 cm (22 1/16 x 18 5/16 in.)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, purchased 1930
Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

Edgar Degas
At the Races in the Countryside, c. 1869
oil on canvas
overall: 36.5 x 55.9 cm (14 3/8 x 22 in.)
framed: 52.1 x 71.1 x 10.5 cm (20 1/2 x 28 x 4 1/8 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1931 Purchase Fund
Photograph © [date of publication] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Claude Monet
Impression, Sunrise, 1872
oil on canvas
framed: 75 x 91 cm (29 1/2 x 35 13/16 in.)
overall: 50 x 65 cm (19 11/16 x 25 9/16 in.)
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, Gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy, 1940
Photo: © Musée Marmottan Monet / Studio Christian Baraja SLB

Camille Pissarro
Hoarfrost, 1873
oil on canvas
framed: 89.5 x 117.5 cm (35 1/4 x 46 1/4 in.)
unframed: 65 x 93.2 cm (25 9/16 x 36 5/8 in.)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, bequest of Enriqueta Alsop in the name of Dr. Eduardo Mollard, 1972
Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

Auguste Renoir
The Dancer, 1874
oil on canvas
142.5 x 94.5 cm (56 1/8 x 37 3/16 in.)
framed: 164.1 x 116.2 cm (64 5/8 x 45 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection

Paul Cezanne
House of the Hanged Man, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 1873
oil on canvas
framed: 75.3 x 87 cm (29 5/8 x 34 1/4 in.)
unframed: 55.5 x 66.3 cm (21 7/8 x 26 1/8 in.)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, bequest of Comte Isaac de Camondo, 1911
Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt