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Sketch for Abstract Composition
Blanche Lazzell
American Art
Blanche Lazzell made this group of objects—part of a larger suite of fourteen works—as an artistic exercise while studying in Paris with the Cubist Albert Gleizes. They provide a fascinating glimpse into Lazzell’s process of transforming a townscape into an abstract composition. The graphite drawings show her progression from a relatively representational image of an urban plaza with buildings, stairways, and trees to ever more reductive, abstract shapes that she rearranged and filled with different patterns and tones, culminating in the watercolor. This kind of experimentation allowed Lazzell to explore the expressive possibilities of abstraction, in keeping with Gleizes’s theories that the juxtaposition of flat forms—through their relation to each other and the paper surface—provides a new way to signify spatial depth.
MEDIUM
Graphite on paper
DATES
1924
DIMENSIONS
Sheet: 10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in. (27 x 21 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Unsigned
COLLECTIONS
American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
2006.43.11
CREDIT LINE
Gift of Dr. Abram Kanof and Theodore Keel, by exchange, Charles Stewart Smith Memorial Fund, and Dick S. Ramsay Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Blanche Lazzell (American, 1879–1956). Sketch for Abstract Composition, 1924. Graphite on paper, Sheet: 10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in. (27 x 21 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. Abram Kanof and Theodore Keel, by exchange, Charles Stewart Smith Memorial Fund, and Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 2006.43.11. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.2006.43.11.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, CUR.2006.43.11.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2009
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RIGHTS STATEMENT
© artist or artist's estate
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