Beatrice Mandelman, My Favorite Taos Modernist

Before coming to New Mexico, I had never heard of the Taos Modernists. I now consider them a primary inspiration for my work. While I will write more about the broader group and its artists in future posts, I first want to celebrate the work of Beatrice Mandelman—my favorite Taos Modernist.

I initially became aware of her art while researching the paintings of her husband, Louis Ribak, whose art I also admire (you can explore more of their work through the Mandelman-Ribak Foundation at mandelman-ribak.org).

Taos has long been recognized as a premier American art colony spanning multiple generations, and Mandelman and Ribak are two compelling reasons why, having produced brilliant, internationally recognized reputations.

Born to a well-off family in Newark, New Jersey, Beatrice developed an interest in modern art at an early age. Through a classmate at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts—which she began attending at age twelve—she met Willem de Kooning (one of my all-time favorites), who later became a close friend. Through de Kooning, she entered the circle of the burgeoning New York vanguard, including Arshile Gorky, Louis Lozowick, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock.

While part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, Mandelman met Ribak. Both were politically engaged liberals influenced by the Great Depression, which deeply shaped their art during those years.

Invited to New Mexico by an associate in 1944, the couple intended only a short visit, but they ultimately decided to settle permanently in Taos. It was a bold decision to leave behind New York’s thriving modern art scene; to many of their peers, moving to a remote desert outpost seemed like career suicide. Beatrice’s close friend Louise Nevelson warned her that “…no artist could afford to leave Manhattan, even for a day.”

Yet both artists were quickly captivated by the high desert light, the rugged terrain, the living traditions of the Taos Pueblo, and the vibrant artist community they encountered upon arrival. They came at a time when realism and abstraction were sharply at odds—much like the New York scene they had left behind—yet in Taos, they easily built friendships across both artistic camps.

In addition to the rich network of local painters, Mandelman and Ribak became close friends with patron and writer Mabel Dodge Luhan, who had likewise traded New York for Taos (photos of the Dodge Luhan estate, where they frequently visited and stayed, appear below). Through Mabel, they socialized with figures like Andrew Dasburg, C.G. Jung, D.H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Thornton Wilder.

Far from finding northern New Mexico isolating, they found it transformative. The expansive southwestern landscape shifted Mandelman’s creative direction toward complete abstraction. She noted on multiple occasions that the vastness and clarity of the region unlocked her abstract style. Rather than documenting the scene representatively, she focused inward.

In his monograph Beatrice Mandelman: Taos Modernist, art historian Robert Hobbs writes:

“When first confronted with the Southwest, its grandeur, its sense of monumental scale, and its radically different light, Bea’s initial reaction was to discard the past and begin again. ‘You had to forget everything you based your work on in New York and start over,’ she later admitted.”

She painted the rhythm, soul, and emotional resonance of the region rather than literal topography. Hobbs also observed that Mandelman was not only “a dedicated painter who finds her long hours in the studio a constant challenge as well as an important solace,” but also a “remarkable individual.”

That observation resonates deeply with my own creative practice: art-making is demanding, rarely leisurely, yet entirely necessary as grounding and solace. I feel an immediate kinship with Bea through that shared reality.

Reflecting on her journey, Mandelman once remarked, “The miracle of me is that I did all this in the middle of cowboy and Indian art—I did the work [while] engulfed in the Southwest motif.”

Love to you all,

Jeane

Originally published November 29, 2010

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