Margaret Ponce Israel


Margaret Ponce Israel was a painter and ceramist who lived and worked in New York City. She was married to New York artist Marvin Israel in 1950 and remained married until his death. Ponce was born in 1929 in Havana, Cuba, brought to the US as an infant. She died in 1987 at age 57 in Manhattan, hit by a tractor-trailer while riding her bike on West 23rd Street.
Israel attended the High School of Music & Art in New York and Syracuse University, studying ceramics at Greenwich House Pottery, where she eventually became an instructor. In 1956 Israel won both first and second prize in ceramics at the Young Americans exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, today the Museum of Arts and Design.
Upon her death, her studio was overflowing with artwork. Her studio/home was a three-story building in Manhattan that was once a horse stable. There she housed a bantam rooster, guinea hens, doves, a rabbit, dogs, and a cat. Her works depict many of these animals, and an exhibit of her work, "A Domestic Bestiary," was at the Perimeter Gallery in Chicago in February, 1998. She taught at Parsons School of Design; Greenwich House Pottery; High School of Music & Art; Y.M.H.A.; all in NYC, and at Ecole des Beaux Arts; Stanley William Hayter Graphic Art Studio; Atelier 17; and, Academie de la Grande Chaumiere all in Paris, France.

Exhibitions