Sketch for Abstract Composition
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
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.
Caption
Blanche Lazzell American, 1879–1956. Sketch for Abstract Composition, 1924. Graphite on cream, thin, smooth 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, 2006.43.7. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2006.43.7_after_treatment_PS4.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Sketch for Abstract Composition
Date
1924
Medium
Graphite on cream, thin, smooth paper.
Classification
Dimensions
Sheet: 10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in. (27 x 21 cm)
Signatures
Unsigned
Credit Line
Gift of Dr. Abram Kanof and Theodore Keel, by exchange, Charles Stewart Smith Memorial Fund, and Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Accession Number
2006.43.7
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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