On
January 9th, I received an email that began, "My name is Gloria Crespo. I
am a Spanish journalist and have been researching on Maria Blanchard for years.
I have just recently finished a documentary film on her and now I am working on
her written biography. Today I have found on the Internet a text about your
poems on her...."
This
was great news to me. As I have chronicled in an essay titled "Speaking of Maria Blanchard," for the online journal Wordgathering, I have
been trying to write about Blanchard for nearly 25 years. When I began, there
was little available to me on her life or images, but the few scraps I could
find, buried in biography footnotes and blotchy black and white photocopies of
prints from interlibrary loans, intrigued me. More recently, as my essay
chronicles, I have actually gotten to see one Blanchard painting and many
prints. And since receiving Crespo’s email, I have been able to find more moving
information about and images by this great Spanish artist.
In
subsequent emails, Crespo has informed me that currently, an exhibit titled
simply, “Maria
Blanchard,” running till February 25, 2013, at the Queen Sofia Museum in
Madrid hopes to recover the artist from oblivion. In the article, “Reclaiming
Maria Blanchard,” the curator of the exhibit, Maria Jose Salazar, notes
that Blanchard has been treated very unfairly. For just one example, on one
canvas, Blanchard’s signature was erased and replaced with that of “Juan Gris,”
her dear friend, but NOT the person who made the painting. Both gender and her
disability worked against her in her time and in the decades following. For
2012, the 80th anniversary of her death, many in Spain set about
trying to give this brave, talented woman her due.
In
addition to paintings, three letters have been discovered recently, which Crespo
has written about for El Pais. But
Crespo’s big contribution to Blanchard’s legacy is a one-hour documentary film
about Blanchard, a clip of which can be viewed on YouTube, “26, Rue de
Depart.” Crespo is looking at the investment of time and money it would
take to make the film available in the U.S.—subtitling, copyright, and other
issues and tasks—which may prove daunting while she works on the Blanchard book.
I
think Americans would show much interest in the film about this fascinating
woman and talented artist. When I posted about Blanchard last week on Facebook,
my friend Maria Bonnett said she really enjoyed viewing the Blanchard images
now available online. A midwife for many years, Bonnett also reminded me that
the story of Maria’s mother’s fall from a horse was probably the sort of blame-the-mother
tactic that was used for generations of children with congenital defects, and I
am sorry to have repeated it. I do agree with an online poster who has suggested
that the effect of Blanchard’s kyphosis on her work and reputation would be a
rich area for disability studies.
Dartmouth
University, as far as I know now, has the only Blanchard painting in the U.S.
(I have tried to see it, but the painting hasn’t been available when I am, and
vice versa.)
Having
written about Frida Kahlo for years, too, I find both women fascinating and
admirable in the excellence they achieved despite debilitating pain and
disability, but the more I come to know about Blanchard, the more I admire how
she went it alone, and, as I have written elsewhere, how she did not become the
maidservant to the famous male artists around her, as many of the women artists
of the time did. That stubbornness may have cost her some fame in her time, so
now we must see to her legacy in our time.
