Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold – Early awakened talent led to art studies

Robert Mangold was born on 12 October 1937 in North Tonawanda in the US state of New York. He discovered his enthusiasm for drawing as a child and drew attention from teachers and fellow students with his obvious talent. At this time, he wished to pursue a career as magazine illustrator, naming the painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell as a great role model, an artist who created 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post throughout a career of more than forty-years and with gained it great popularity. In 1956, Robert Mangold thus began an art course at the Cleveland Institute of Fine Art. During his time as a student, he oriented himself strongly towards the Abstract Expressionists Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb and Willem de Kooning whose works he attempted to emulate. In 1961, Mangold gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the renowned Yale University in New Heaven and married the artist Sylvia Plimack.

With great joy of experimentation to master of Minimal Art

On graduation, Robert Mangold moved with his wife to New York where he worked at the Museum of Modern Art, initially as attendant, and then as library assistant. During this time, he met a number of young artists who also worked as attendants in order to earn a living, including Sol Le Witt and Robert Ryman. Having experimented with different art forms in his early years, in the 1960s he arrived at his characteristic abstract geometric style. It was Piet Mondrian who convinced Mangold to trust the power and impact of simplicity. He soon became a master of Minimal Art and could present his works at the first exhibitions of the New York galleries Fischbach and Thibaut.

International exhibition success; areas and walls as trademarks

Robert Mangold held his first solo exhibition in the famous Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in 1971 and took part in documenta in Kassel three times. With his minimalist works, he played numerous important museums and galleries in Europe and the USA and in 2004 received honorary membership of the National Academy of Design. Robert Mangold’s paintings remind connoisseurs of, among others, the works of Antonio Tàpies and Alberto Burri. Since the 1960s, the artist has used sawn hardboard as the basis for his pictures: he sprays the intentionally irregular and coarse pieces with soft shimmering oil paints and juxtaposes them with dully painted, angular objects cut with sharp contours. This gave rise to his areas and walls which hold an important focus in Robert Mangold’s creativity to this day. The artist expanded his oeuvre in the 1970s to shaped canvases.

Robert Mangold lives and works today in Washingtonville in New York state.