Maria Blanchard, the pioneer of cubism and other avant-garde movements, was born in Santander in 1881, with a serious back deformity, a kyphoscoliosis that made her say: I would trade my whole life for a little beauty. However, even before settling in Paris in 1909, with the scholarships he had won for his talent, he had already given signs that everything that would pass through his hands would be beauty, color and soul without restrictions, without academic limits or imposed rules.
In Montparnasse he coincided with artists such as Picasso, Joan Gris, Angelina Beloff or Diego Rivera; with the last two he lived and shared an apartment. Among them she enjoyed the recognition and prestige that in Spain was denied at that time to cubism and, as was typical of those years, to any woman artist. In fact, her attempts to settle again in Spain ended in failure. There were exceptions: Ramón Gómez de la Serna always appreciated her exceptional originality, which made her free even within an avant-garde movement. The Generation of '27 admired his courage and his ability to see beyond the forms and still keep the same spirit. The interwar period polished her gaze, and the commissions, on which she depended to survive, conditioned some of her themes, which she still transformed into what she was: an open wound to life.
Physical pain and economic needs accompanied her in her last years. One of her consolations, perhaps the most unexpected, was religion: her paintings, and she herself, took on something mystical, of deep transit, devoid of appearances.
She died very young, in 1932, at the age of 51, of tuberculosis. For many years, her work and her figure went unnoticed, almost forgotten. Without a partner, without descendants to watch over his legacy, recognition has come to him late, but there is no turning back. Not after seeing his paintings and guessing in them that voice, that unique look, that capacity to leave his body, his moment, his environment, towards the absolute.
