Beatrice Mandelman (1912 – 1998)

  Beatrice Mandelman (1912-1998), had established herself in the New York art scene to a not inconsiderable degree by the time she left Manhattan for Taos, N.M., in 1944.  Having studied at the Arts Student League, Mandelman went on to work at the W.P.A., exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art and associate with the likes of John Sloan, Willem de Kooning, Stuart Davis and Arshile Gorky.

Health concerns took Mandelman out West, but New York never left her. Even a later painting like Jazz II Series #1711 (1987) recalls the clattering rhythms and abrupt transitions of the city and, in particular, The City, Fernand Legers masterpiece of 1919. (Mandelman had, for a time studied with the French master.)

Mandelmans kaleidoscopic abstractions evince a wide range of influences, from stained-glass windows to the School of Paris, from Native American art to the New York School. The terseness of her compositions recalls that of Lee Krasner, and her faith in the decorative as a legitimate means of artistic pursuit the pictures of Judith Rothschild.

Mandelman wasnt as large in her ambitions as the former, nor as luscious a colorist as the latter; like both, she was a sophisticated and capable painter who never quite made the grade. Still, if her paintings are unlikely to send anyone scurrying to the art history-books with a bottle of white-out and waterproof marker, they are good to look at.

Source:  Gary Snyder
The New York Observer
November 12, 2001
The Observatory