For Alice, 107th and Broadway, 1984
Acrylic on linen, 60” x 40”
Alice Neel is said to have been one of the 20th Century’s most powerfully original portraitists, as well as one of the Century’s preeminent American artists. Her portraits on the surface appear to be character studies but they also evoke the conflicts that lie beneath the surface. They are charming and at the same time psychologically charged. Alice was said to have lived ahead of her time, a woman obsessed with painting. Images of Alice portray a soft and warm person yet she was extremely complicated and made choices that had a significant impact on those close to her often resulting in emotional scars. While she grew up in a middle class family in rural Pennsylvania, she left that life to attend The Philadelphia School of Design for Women. After heart wrenching personal struggles, in 1927 she moved to New York. Her paintings reflected her life, she moved in the art scene and painted art world celebrities, as well as the poor from her Spanish Harlem neighborhood. Neel never conformed to the prevailing style in the art world and therefore received little recognition until the last decade of her life when she achieved fame and recognition after a retrospective of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, followed by a retrospective of her work at the Georgia Museum of Art in 1975. Alice Neel died in 1984 at the age of 84.
Alice Neel’s ability to capture the soul of her subjects has captured my attention from the first time I saw her work. I read everything I could find about her and studied every image I saw of her paintings. When I arrived in New York in 1980, I called her up and asked her if I could come and meet her. She said yes. I attended every talk I could find where she spoke and in 1984, I called her and asked if she would pose for me. She said yes. It was just months before she died and she was very frail. It captures the very end of her, meant to be reflective and contempletive. She sat up straight in her recliner in front of her window looking out onto the street scene of 107th Street and Broadway, the scene she had portrayed in her painting, “107th and Broadway.” As I look back at her portrait I see some of the person she revealed in her self-portrait (1980).
Acrylic on linen, 60” x 40”
Alice Neel is said to have been one of the 20th Century’s most powerfully original portraitists, as well as one of the Century’s preeminent American artists. Her portraits on the surface appear to be character studies but they also evoke the conflicts that lie beneath the surface. They are charming and at the same time psychologically charged. Alice was said to have lived ahead of her time, a woman obsessed with painting. Images of Alice portray a soft and warm person yet she was extremely complicated and made choices that had a significant impact on those close to her often resulting in emotional scars. While she grew up in a middle class family in rural Pennsylvania, she left that life to attend The Philadelphia School of Design for Women. After heart wrenching personal struggles, in 1927 she moved to New York. Her paintings reflected her life, she moved in the art scene and painted art world celebrities, as well as the poor from her Spanish Harlem neighborhood. Neel never conformed to the prevailing style in the art world and therefore received little recognition until the last decade of her life when she achieved fame and recognition after a retrospective of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974, followed by a retrospective of her work at the Georgia Museum of Art in 1975. Alice Neel died in 1984 at the age of 84.
Alice Neel’s ability to capture the soul of her subjects has captured my attention from the first time I saw her work. I read everything I could find about her and studied every image I saw of her paintings. When I arrived in New York in 1980, I called her up and asked her if I could come and meet her. She said yes. I attended every talk I could find where she spoke and in 1984, I called her and asked if she would pose for me. She said yes. It was just months before she died and she was very frail. It captures the very end of her, meant to be reflective and contempletive. She sat up straight in her recliner in front of her window looking out onto the street scene of 107th Street and Broadway, the scene she had portrayed in her painting, “107th and Broadway.” As I look back at her portrait I see some of the person she revealed in her self-portrait (1980).