Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956), a native of West Virginia and graduate of West Virginia University, was an early practitioner of Modern art in America. Lazzell was employed by the government-sponsored Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in 1934 in Morgantown, West Virginia. During her time with the program, Lazzell completed three wood-block prints and painted Justice, a mural for the Monongalia County Courthouse. This thesis examines Lazzell’s courthouse mural and discusses Lazzell’s selection of three themes, education, religion, and industry, and why they are significant to the Morgantown area. This thesis demonstrates that although the PWAP stipulated that there was to be no European modernist characteristics evident in work produced for the project, Lazzell’s courthouse mural exhibits traits of European modernist aesthetics
