Cubist Still Life 1919

María Blanchard made this Cubist Still Life with oil on canvas, sometime in the early 20th century. Look at how the colours and shapes come together – the red, the white, and the greys! You can see how the making of the art is a process of looking and thinking. Blanchard’s built this from simplified forms and a restrained palette. The brushstrokes feel deliberate, giving a subtle texture to the surface. There’s a sense of layering, of building up shapes and colours to create depth and form. It’s not about perfect representation but about capturing the essence of the objects. Notice the dark lines describing the objects in the bowl, they have a graphic quality. The painting shows the physicality of Blanchard’s art. Blanchard, like Picasso, was working in a Cubist mode, though with her own individual voice. It’s a conversation across time, and a reminder that art is never created in a vacuum but always in dialogue with others. It’s a way of seeing and experiencing the world and that’s the beauty of it – there’s no one right way to interpret it.