Woman with Guitar 1917

María Blanchard made this painting, Woman with Guitar, using oil paint, and a restricted palette, somewhere in the early 20th Century. The painting feels almost like a puzzle, or a diagram, where geometric shapes meet and collide to suggest a figure holding an instrument. The paint is applied in flat planes, and the muted colors – mostly grays, browns, blacks, and fleshy pinks – give it a somber, almost melancholic feel. Look at how the hands are rendered: angular and almost robotic, yet they convey the sense of holding or caressing. I'm drawn to the way Blanchard simplifies the form, reducing it to its essential components. It’s like she’s deconstructing the act of painting itself, taking it apart to see how it works. There's a real dialogue happening here with the Cubist painters like Picasso and Braque, but with a uniquely personal twist. Blanchard brings a certain gravity and emotional depth to the Cubist idiom. I think this painting invites us to slow down, to contemplate the relationship between form and feeling.