Beatrice Mandelman

Beatrice Mandelman (December 31, 1912 – June 24, 1998), 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. The school closed in 1953 after losing GI Bill funding. Mandelamn and Ribak decamped for New York where they lived from 1954-56 before returning to their home in Taos.

Her work was included in the 1940 MoMA show American Color Prints Under $10. The show was organized as a vehicle for bringing affordable fine art prints to the general public. Mandelman was also included in the 1947 and 1951 Dallas Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions of the National Serigraph Society.

Far from the strictures of the mainstream art world, Mandelman found the creative freedom to develop her own distinct style, which merged an Abstract Expressionist sensibility with inspiration from the light, color, landscape, and cultures of the American West. Other influences derived from Mandelman's love of adventure. She traveled widely throughout her lifetime, visiting South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and living for extended periods in Mexico, where she and Ribak would go virtually every year to escape the cold northern New Mexico winters

Mandelman and Ribak's home served as the gathering place for an informal group of artists who began calling themselves the Taos Moderns. Key members of this group included Edward Corbett, Agnes Martin, Oli Sihvonen, and Clay Spohn. Mandelman was included in a 1952 group exhibition "Taos Painting Yesterday and Today" at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. It was the first museum exhibition to address the development of Modernist art in Taos.

After Ribak's death in 1979, Mandelman remained in Taos.

The 1990s: final years In her final decade, Mandelman continued painting despite debilitating bouts with cancer. In May, 1998, two months before she died, Mandelman was featured in an article in Forbes magazine, which drew international attention and sales. Her spirits buoyed by recognition and sales, and propped up by her caregivers as she painted, Mandelman was able to produce thirty-one works comprising the Winter Series. She died of cancer on June 24, 1998, in her Taos home, at the age of 85.