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MARÍA GUTIÉRREZ BLANCHARD (Santander 1881 - Paris 1932). "Still life". Pastel on paper adhered to canvas. Signed in the lower left corner. Measurements: 53 x 64 cm; 58 x 68 cm (frame). It is well known that Maria Blanchard made several versions of the same subject using different techniques. In this particular case the work presents the same composition as the painting referenced in the artist's catalog Volume II, Liliane Caffin Madaule, entitled "Nature Morte", on page 238. The work was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts of Santander from a private individual in 1985. According to the catalog we could date this painting around 1930 because Maria's sister found it in the studio when the artist died and sold it around 1936. This indicates that this work belongs to the same period. In 1933, in an exhibition of the painter's works organized by the Spanish Tourist Office, the catalog read: "Still Life with Basket". In this still life of cubist composition, the artist shows us a scene of warm tones and ambiguous lighting. Like Cézanne, this work shows her heritage, as the artist presents nature in a synthesized way, reduced to its basic, geometric and simple forms. However, she seeks to go beyond the synthesis between naturalism and Cézanne's pictorial order by capturing different points of view in a single image; the synthesis is no longer reduced to what the eye sees, but to what the mind knows to be there and makes up the totality of the image, not in a physical but in an intellectual way. However, Blanchard does not abandon realism, but forms a still life of recognizable forms, heir to the portrait tradition and also brings a mature vision, typical of his last stage, defined through the use of a broad brushstroke, fast and vibrant, thus obtaining a work that stands out for its expressionist aesthetic. María Gutierrez Blanchard, usually known by her mother's surname, trained as a painter in Madrid, where she moved in 1903. Here she studied under the guidance of the painters Emilio Sala and Álvarez de Sotomayor. In 1909 she obtained a scholarship from the Diputación de Santander to study in Paris. In the French capital he received classes from Anglada Camarasa and Kees van Dongen, freeing him from his academic training and introducing him fully into the world of avant-garde art. In 1914 he returned to Madrid and began to attend Ramón Gómez de la Serna's gatherings at the Pombo café, participating in the controversial exhibition "Pintores íntegros". After devoting himself temporarily to teaching in Salamanca, in 1916 he returned definitively to Paris. From that year until 1920 he developed a cubist stage in which figurative references never disappeared. He was part of the Parisian cubist group and became friends with some of its members, such as Juan Gris, Lipchitz and André Lhote. In the 1920s he exhibited in exhibitions organized in Paris and Belgium. Among the works of his first stage stands out "The Communicant", presented with great success at the Salon des Indépendants in 1921. Between 1920 and 1932 he returned to a type of figurative painting, although cubist from the compositional point of view, in which the light treatment generates cottony textures. In Spain there have been two anthologies dedicated to the painter, one at the Biosca Gallery in Madrid (1962) and the other at the former Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (1982). Maria Blanchard was both a great painter and a theoretician, since she organized gatherings in her Paris apartment, where different artists, among them Juan Gris, discussed painting and the new trends that were taking place at the time.