White Peonies and Red Rose

Born in West Virginia, Blanche Lazzell was a pioneering American modernist, known for her white-line woodcut technique and her embrace of Cubism. Realized through a series of mosaic-like patches, this still life pulsates with visual energy and exemplifies the artist’s shift from a traditional, prescribed aesthetic to a more avant-garde approach.

Lazzell first traveled to Paris in 1912, where instructors introduced her to the work of Paul Cézanne. White Peonies and Red Rose reflects Lazzell’s absorption of those lessons and foreshadows her subsequent—and passionate—pursuit of abstraction, which she believed to be the ideal means for conveying an “artist’s inner thought—yes, the artist’s very soul.”