Composición cubista (Cubist Composition)

Composición cubista (Cubist Composition) is a piece from a time when María Blanchard was very close to Juan Gris, and constitutes the turning point in her Cubist work. This mainly focused on still lifes, in which she found her own way of applying the premises of the movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. This painting specifically takes from the poetics of Synthetic Cubism, and by eliminating superfluous planes, the painter has condensed the various possible viewpoints of the represented object, reducing them to a well-balanced synthesis.
For Composición cubista Blanchard used a palette dominated by the usual earth colours, dead leaf greens, greys, blacks and whites, but in this case, her loyalty to Juan Gris’ aesthetic principles involving colour led her to bring shades that were far more daring, ranging from golden or orange yellow to lemon yellow. The large piece of wallpaper occupies the upper left portion of the canvas, standing out from all the other compositional elements. The result is a bright and vividly coloured painting, where even the title forms part of the veiled homage Blanchard wished to pay to her teacher Juan Gris.

Paloma Esteban Leal