Books Mandelman & Ribak in Taos | ||
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Died 1998, Taos, Missouri, United States | ||
Beatrice Mandelman (December 31, 1912 – June 24, 1998) was an American abstract artist associated with the group known as the "Taos Moderns".
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Education and personal life
Beatrice Mandelman, known as Bea, was born in Newark, New Jersey to Anna Lisker Mandelman and Louis Mandelman. In the 1930s, she studied at Rutgers University, the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, and the Art Students League in New York. She later studied with Fernand Leger in Paris in 1948-1949.
Mandelman married fellow artist Louis Ribak in 1942.
Career
Between 1935 and 1942, Mandelman was employed the Works Progress Administration's Federal Arts Project (WPA), first as a muralist and later as a printmaker. She was one of the original members of the WPA's silkscreen unit. In this period, her work was associated with the early phase of the New York School, and by the early 1940s her work was being included in exhibitions at major venues such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).
In 1944, Mandelman and her husband visited the artist John Sloan in Santa Fe and traveled up to Taos, which so appealed to them that they impulsively decided to settle there. They connected with other modern artists settling in Taos in the 1940s and 1950s, such as Edward Corbett and Agnes Martin, and this group became known as the "Taos Moderns". In 1947, they founded the Taos Valley Art School, and they taught there until it closed in 1953. They also helped to found the Taos Art Association and the Stables Gallery.
Mandelman's oeuvre consisted mainly of paintings, prints, and other works on paper. Much of her work was highly abstract, including her representational pieces such as cityscapes, landscapes, and still lifes. Through the 1940s, her paintings feature richly textured surfaces and a subtly modulated, often subdued color palette. New Mexico landscape and culture had a profound influence on Mandelman's style, influencing it towards a brighter palette, more geometric forms, a flatter surface, and more crisply defined forms. One critic wrote that the "twin poles" of her work were Cubism and Expressionism.
Mandelman traveled widely throughout her lifetime, visiting South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and living for extended periods in Mexico.
Mandelman died in Taos in 1998.
Legacy
The Mandelman-Ribak Foundation was established to preserve the legacy of Mandelman and her husband; among other activities, it catalogued a half century of their work held in the Mandelman-Ribak Collection. In 2014, the collection and associated personal papers were donated to the University of New Mexico.