Grace Martin Taylor, Proponent for Modernism

Grace Martin Taylor (1903-1995) was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. She left Morgantown to study art at a number of institutions like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Carnegie Institute, West Virginia University and The Art Students League in New York. Taylor also studied with noted Modernist artists Arthur B. Carles, Hans Hoffmann, Emil Bisttram, and she studied for periods of time between 1925-1954 with her cousin, Blanche Lazzell, in Provincetown, MA.

Creative types can abound in families, although they tend to be seen more often in generational father-son lines, not necessarily in cousins. The Taylor/Lazzell clan also worked together for many years, but while each artist had their won look,  associations and visual connections can be drawn when comparing Taylor and Lazzell's work. 

Lazzell worked in a Japanese style woodblock printmaking method called the Provincetown print and she introduced it toTaylor. They often spent summers working together on these prints in Provincetown; the products of which are generally considered amongst both artists' finest works. In Taylor's case her sensibility for fractured still-lifes and landscapes show her clear preference for abstraction. She burgeons on a raw, more primitive side side of woodblocks when not making her more well-known Provincetown prints, but her color work is sophisticated and relatively intense when compared with her cousin.

Taylor was also known as a prolific artist and taught studio art at the university level. She spent her career in academia and was head of the art department and also president (1955-56) of the Mason College of Music and Fine Arts in Charleston, W.Va. (which is now known as the University of Charleston).She is credited with perpetuating modern art and abstraction in West Virginia

Taylor's works have been exhibited throughout the United States at several prestigious museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Smithsonian Institution, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and ACME Fine Art in Boston.

In 2008 Taylor's work was included in “The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock” at the British Museum in London, England.

Blanche Lazzell, Modernist Printmaker

Blanche Lazzell , 1878-1956, was a prolific artist whose career spanned several art movements, namely Post-Impressionism,  Cubism, and Abstraction. She was a painter/printmaker, whose complex compositions and vibrant color were her trademark in the early part of the 20th century. Like Sonja Delaunay, Lazzell's work was also recognized in textile design circles and she became known as one of the earliest US Modernists alongside the more popular Georgia O'Keefe. Her color woodblocks helped establish her fame as a creative force for abstraction, and she was one of the first artists to successfully bring attention to a painterly abstraction in relief.

Born in Maidsville, West VirginiaBorn in Maidsville, West Virginia, she studied art at West Virginia University and then moved to New York to continue her art education with the famed William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League. She eventually went to Europe and settled down for a few years at the famous Parisian artist colony Montparnasse; studying at several academies before setting her stylistic sights upon the 'Moderne' genre. Lazzell later moved back to the US, this time to Provincetown, MA, and remained there the rest of her career.

From the work seen here, Lazzell became known for her fervent interest and pursuit of what is called the “Provincetown print,” a relief method of incised wood-block printing that uses one block instead of using separate blocks for separate colors. Her compositions show a keen understanding of cubism; with a fractured-yet-whole subject matter. Her still-lifes were quite popular, and her color sensibility in the printmaking medium while colorful, retains a subtlety more often seen in Japanese woodblocks.  As a matter of note, Lazzell became so enraptured with the print medium, that she participated in the 1918 exhibition of the Provincetown Printers, (which is recognized as the  First woodblock print society ever formed in the United States.)

Lazzell continually explored a variety of new techniques and media throughout her career, and in the late 1930s, Lazzell even went to study with the master teacher/painter Hans Hofmann, to perfect her  abstract composition skills.  

Today, Lazzell’s prints and paintings are surfacing in private collections and are becoming more frequently seen in art auctions, but one is able to see her works in numerous public collections, namely the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.;  the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York. A book of Lazzell's work recently was published, called "Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of an American Modernist written by ROBERT C. BRIDGES, KRISTINA M. OLSON, JANET E. SNYDER 

On a final note, what is also interesting was Grace Martin Taylor, Lazzell's cousin, was  a recognized artist in her own right. A commentary on her work will be forth-coming.