Portrait of Two Women

LOUIS RIBAK, 1902-1979

Ribak met fellow artist Bea Mandelman at a dance sponsored by the artist’s union and married her shortly after. He was discharged from the military in WWII because of asthma. They decided to follow John Sloan to New Mexico for health and artistic reasons. His health improved and he shifted his painterly style entirely to abstraction. He was an important force behind forming the Taos Moderns and the Taos Valley Art School. Ribak’s later work evolved into what can be described as lyrical Abstract Expressionism. Artists of this movement veered away from hard-edged geometric imagery to the primacy of line in a lyrical sensuous style. His palette became brighter.