Sylvia Plimack Mangold

American, 1938

Mangold was born in New York City in 1938, and studied at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and Yale University. She is an American artist, painter, printmaker and pastelist. She is known for her representational depictions of interiors and landscapes. The artist began exhibiting her paintings in the late 1960s, and her work has been the subject of more than 30 solo exhibitions. Mangold’s paintings are included in permanent collections at museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York City. She lives and works in Washingtonville, New York.

Best known for her representational depictions of interiors and landscapes, Plimack Mangold’s early works reveal her representational style and attraction to depth and space. Her style progressed to incorporate natural elements, such as tree branches and leaves. These naturalistic compositions are tightly cropped and are neither purely depictive, nor purely abstract. She has been drawing and painting the trees on her property for more than three decades, and this simple yet consuming project has caused her to develop a masterful sensitivity to the materials she uses.

Photo by Ivory Serra