Label
(from 2014.Old Walks and New)
Beatrice Mandelman, American, 1912-1998
The Patch, c. 1938-1941, lithograph
This work portrays a coal miner trudging through a ramshackle mining town near Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was created while Mandelman worked for the WPA/Federal Arts Project in New York. Like many artists on the project, Mandelman sympathized with left-wing causes, and her work of the Depression years frequently exposes the plight of the working class. A Social Realist, Mandelman was, nevertheless, influenced by Cezanne and the Cubists, as seen in the angular forms of the buildings, which are set at diagonals against each other. This treatment communicates the dilapidated condition of housing provided by the mining company.