Alice Neel

For the film, see Alice Neel (film).

Alice Neel
Neel in her studio
photographed by Lynn Gilbert (1976)
Born(1900-01-28)January 28, 1900
Merion Square, Pennsylvania
DiedOctober 13, 1984(1984-10-13) (aged 84)
New York City, New York
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting
WebsiteOfficial website Edit this at Wikidata

Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American visual artist. Recognized for her paintings of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers, Neel is considered one of the greatest American portraitists of the 20th century.[1][2][3] Her career spanned from the 1920s to 1980s.[4]

Her paintings have an expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. She pursued a career as a figurative painter during a period when abstraction was favored, and she did not begin to gain critical praise for her work until the 1960s.[1] Her work contradicts and challenges the traditional and objectified nude depictions of women by her male predecessors.[5] This is done by depicting women through a female gaze, illustrating them as being consciously aware of the objectification by men and the demoralizing effects of the male gaze.[5]

  1. ^ a b Neel received an honorary doctorate from the Moore College of Art and Design in 1971. A retrospective of her work was held at the Whitney Museum in 1974. In the last years of her life she finally received extensive national recognition for her paintings. "Alice Neel" Archived June 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, BBC, Retrieved November 13, 2014.
  2. ^ Smee, Sebastian (April 8, 2021). "Alice Neel was the greatest American portraitist of the 20th century. Her work continues to astonish". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved May 1, 2024.
  3. ^ Smith, Roberta (April 1, 2021). "It's Time to Put Alice Neel in Her Rightful Place in the Pantheon". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 1, 2024. she is a cult figure, an early feminist, inborn bohemian, erstwhile Social Realist, lifelong activist and staunchly representational painter who bravely persisted, depicting the people and world around her through the heydays of Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism
  4. ^ "Alice Neel". Sotheby's. Retrieved July 31, 2023.
  5. ^ a b Bauer, Denise (1994). "Alice Neel's Female Nudes". Woman's Art Journal. 15 (2): 21–26. doi:10.2307/1358600. ISSN 0270-7993. JSTOR 1358600.