Beatrice Mandelman (December 31, 1912 – June 24, 1998), known as Bea, was an American abstract artist associated with the group known as the Taos Moderns. She was born in Newark, New Jersey to Anna Lisker Mandelman and Louis Mandelman, Jewish immigrants who imbued their children with their social justice values and love of the arts. After studying art in New York City and being employed by the Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project (WPA-FAP), Mandelman arrived in Taos, New Mexico, with her artist husband Louis Leon Ribak in 1944 at the age of 32. Mandelman's oeuvre consisted mainly of paintings, prints, and collages. 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, flatter surfaces, and more crisply defined forms. One critic wrote that the "twin poles" of her work were Cubism and Expressionism. Her work is included in many major public collections, including large holdings at the University of New Mexico Art Museum and Harwood Museum of Art.
Early life
Beatrice Mandelman was born on December 31, 1912, in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish immigrant parents who imbued their children with progressive social values and love of the arts. By age 12, Mandelman had begun taking classes at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and determined that she would become an artist. Throughout her formative years, Mandelman developed an enduring international sensibility and absorbed influences from various forms of Modernism. In 1924 artist Louis Lozowick, a family friend, returned from a four year sojourn in Europe and Russia and was an important source of information about Russian Constructivism and other avant garde developments abroad. Mandelman met graphic designer and illustrator Robert Jonas, who introduced her to Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and other New York vanguard artists.
Education
From 1930-32, Mandelman attended New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick, part of Rutgers University, and then the Newark School for Fine and Industrial Art, where she studied with Social Realist painter Bernar Gussow. Gussow had studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and introduced Mandelman to Cubism and the School of Paris. Her plans to study in Paris, however, were interrupted by the death of her father in 1932 and the Great Depression, and it was not until 1948, that Mandelman was able to realize her dream of Paris, where she studied in the studio of Fernand Léger, became friends with Cubist painter Francis Picabia.
WPA Years: 1935-1942
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. In 1937-38 she was sent by the WPA to Butte, Montana, to work in the Project Art Center teaching art to children and adults. Upon returning to New York, she resumed her studies at the Art Students League to learn printmaking, and joined the WPA Graphic Arts Division. She became one of the original members of the Silk Screen Unit, who, under the leadership of Anthony Velonis, transformed what had been primarily a commercial medium into an artistic one. Her work in this new medium received an immediate and enthusiastic response. By 1941, her work was associated with the early phase of the New York School, and by the early 1940s her prints began to be acquired by museums and were included in exhibitions at major venues such as the Chicago Art Institute, Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.). Mandelman worked for the WPA until 1942, when it was disbanded. Although her style would gradually evolve from Social Realism to abstraction, her works from this period reflect a leftist political bent that continued throughout her life, and would resurface later in a series of collages against the Vietnam War that she created in the 1960s and 70s.
Taos Years
Mandelman married fellow artist Louis Ribak in 1942. While still in New York the couple became involved in the early years of the New York School, including vacationing with Jackson Pollock in the summer of 1943, as his career trajectory was taking off. Ribak also became politically active with associates who were under FBI surveillance.