María Blanchard

(Santander, 1881 – Paris, 1932)

Composition avec tâche rouge

1916

oil on canvas

100.3 x 65 cm

Inv. no. 36273

BBVA Collection Spain



María Blanchard is considered one of the key artists working in
. In the early years of the twentieth century, after she met and received classes from Marie Vassilieff (1884-1957) in Paris, the artist took her first steps on the path towards the movement spearheaded by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and George Braque (1882-1963). Blanchard was to contribute her own highly personal version, strongly marked by her life experiences. With the passing of time Blanchard became immersed in a period of experimentation culminating in a body of work that ought to be ascribed to New Objectivity and
.

This work, of great chromatic charm and excellent execution, was painted by Blanchard the same year that she settled permanently in Paris. It is a painting characteristic of this period, in which, after assimilating with admirable ease the most interesting features of
, the artist elaborated paintings that we could associate to the pieces of Juan Gris (1887-1927)—with whom she socialised assiduously in Paris—but also with the creations of Albert Gleizes (1881-1953), Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), André Lothe (1885-1962) or even the canvas that her friend Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was producing at the time.

The canvas represents a maternity, the first one by this artist that we know of, and depicts a woman seated in a rocking chair holding a child in her arms. The similarity between this picture and the one done by Diego Rivera that same year—the year that the son of the Mexican painter and Angelina Beloff (1879-1969), in whose house this artist from Cantabria was staying, was born—suggests that the two paintings represent the same scene. They are both cubist works, conceived in warm tones with the presence of red, and where straight and curved lines mix to lend movement to the composition.