Louis Ribak

Louis Leon Ribak was born on December 3, 1903, in Grodno. Ribak became an influential painter of the New York School in abstract expressionism and then moved to Taos in 1944 with his wife, Bea Mandelman. Louis Ribak emigrated to the United States from Lithuania, moving to New York in 1922, where he studied with John Sloan at the Art Students League of New York. He quickly made a name for himself as an influential social realist painter in New York, even collaborating on a mural in Rockefeller Centre with Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Beginning with work that was included in the 1934 Venice Biennial art exhibition and continuing with his social realist painting of that decade, Ribak captured the vibrant images of urban life with considerable power. He appeared to be making a career for himself when, in 1944, he moved to Taos, New Mexico, at the invitation of Joan Sloan, a summer resident of Santa Fe. Ribak shifted to a more modernist approach upon his move to New Mexico. Ribak died in Taos, New Mexico, in 1979.