Born in Maidsville, West Virginia, Blanche Lazzell became a leading figure in color-woodblock printmaking in a geometric, Cubist influenced style. She is most associated with the art colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she belonged to the Provincetown Print Makers founded in 1915.
Lazzell studied at West Virginia University and by 1905, had earned three university degrees, highly unusual for a woman of that time. In 1908, she entered the Art Students League in New York as a pupil of William Merritt Chase, and in 1912, she studied in Paris at the Academie Moderne with Charles Guerin, a modernist, anti-academic teacher. She returned to Paris in 1923 and 1924 and studied with Fernand Leger, Andre Lhote, and Albert Gleizes. From 1923 to 1930, she exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris.
By 1915, she had established her studio in the art colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and became a leading personality, especially known for her woodblocks. During the 1930s, she was a WPA (Works Progress Administration) artist, completing a set of prints depicting her family life at Morgantown, West Virginia.
