Green Still Life with Lamp 1917

María Blanchard made this painting, Green Still Life with Lamp, with oil paint. Isn't it lovely how she’s created such a geometrically complex composition, and yet it still feels so intimate? The shapes are very angular and blocky, but I can see how she used a brush to daub the paint and create the tiny dot effects, almost like folk art. I wonder what the surface is actually like? The colour palette is very subdued, mostly greys and browns, but then there are hints of blues and greens. Look at the lines of dots around the lamp. I can imagine her making these with a brush. There's no obvious sense of depth, but you can tell that the lamp is central to the whole scene. Maybe it's the colours of the lamp that lend the piece its name? Blanchard's contemporary, Juan Gris, also played with geometry and colour in his paintings. Both artists were part of the Cubist movement, which encouraged them to explore the relationship between abstraction and representation. You can see the echoes of the still life tradition here, but with a thoroughly modern twist.