Blanche Lazzell (1878–1956), a pioneering American Modernist artist and printmaker largely forgotten today, is featured in the exhibition “Herself: American Artists of the 20th Century” at New York’s Lincoln Glenn Gallery. The show brings together 30 women artists spanning roughly 90 years, including Alice Neel, Grace Hartigan, Barbara Kruger, Sheila Hicks, and March Avery. Lazzell, who earned her fine arts degree at West Virginia University in 1905, studied at the Art Students League alongside Georgia O’Keeffe, traveled to Paris, and cofounded the Provincetown Printers, the nation’s first woodblock print society. She is credited with developing the white-line woodcut technique known as the Provincetown Print, and her work is held by major institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
This article matters because it highlights the ongoing effort to recover and celebrate the contributions of women artists who were marginalized in art history. Lazzell’s story exemplifies how many female modernists were overlooked despite their innovation and influence. The exhibition, which dedicates half of Lincoln Glenn’s programming to women artists, reflects a broader institutional push to correct historical imbalances. By profiling Lazzell, the article also underscores the role of regional origins—in this case, West Virginia—in shaping an artist’s path, and how galleries and museums are now working to bring such figures back into the canon.