Alice Neel
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About
One of the foremost painters of the twentieth century, and among its most radical, Alice Neel (1900–1984) is known for her daring honesty in her pursuit of what she termed ‘the truth’ – of the individual and the broader society in which individual lives were lived. A painter of people, cityscapes, landscapes and still lifes, she was a woman with a strong social conscience and equally strong beliefs.
Neel’s is an art characterised by honesty. Throughout her career-long commitment to depicting the human condition and her practice of painting people from many walks of life, she addressed her subjects on canvas without preliminary sketches. The result of this direct approach is a body of work that preserves the spontaneity of initial ideas and the liveliness of the one-to-one encounter. Few twentieth century artists have documented the cycle of life with as penetrating a gaze. Her paintings of mothers and babies reveal her deep understanding of their close bond while her depictions of the elderly reveal an empathy for the changes that accompany old age.
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Biography
Alice Neel was born near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1900 and died in 1984 in New York. Recent institutional exhibitions include Alice Neel: Feels Like Home, Orange County Museum of Art, California, USA (2023–24); the major retrospective, Alice Neel: Un regard engagé, highlighting the political and social commitment of the painter, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2022–23), which travelled to the Barbican Centre in London, UK (Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle, 2023) and to MUNCH, Oslo, Norway (Alice Neel: Every Person is a New Universe, 2023); and the acclaimed 2021–22 touring survey Alice Neel: People Come First, organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, in association with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, USA.
Previous solo institutional exhibitions include Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life at Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland (2016) travelling to Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands (2016–17), Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France (2017), Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2017–18); Alice Neel: The Subject and Me, Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh, UK (2016); Alice Neel: Intimate Relations, Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skarhamn, Sweden (2013); Alice Neel: Painted Truths, a retrospective that toured to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, USA (2010), the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, UK (2010) and the Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden (2010–11); Collector of Souls at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2008) and Alice Neel, organised by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA and travelling to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2000).
Neel’s work is in the collections of major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; Tate, London, UK; the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA; the Denver Art Museum, USA; the Milwaukee Art Museum, USA; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA.
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News
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Hilton Als speaks to Dazed about At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World
February 12, 2025'Alice Neel gave us the opportunity to touch and understand each other, even if for a little bit.'Read More -
Curator Hilton Als talks to Wallpaper* about At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World
January 31, 2025‘Ultimately what I loved about these “queer” pictures is what I love throughout her art: empathy devoid of sentimentality.’Read More -
At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World reviewed in The Times
January 30, 2025★★★★ 'And this is Neel's skill, quite apart from her ingenious use of colour (her skins are superb, flaws and all) and keen observation. She draws out the person, gives them life on the canvas.'Read More -
Art Review selects At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World as one of its exhibitions to see in January
January 6, 2025’For Alice Neel, her practice of painting people from many walks of life, from neighbours to writers, performers, artists, politicians and activists – friends and strangers – led her to share this intimate space with a dizzyingly diverse range of subjects.’ – Louise Benson. The exhibition opens in London on 30 January.Read More -
Isaac Julien, Alice Neel and Chris Ofili feature in the Frieze top ten shows in the UK and Ireland in 2023
December 8, 2023Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is to Me at Tate Britain, Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle at the Barbican Art Gallery and Chris Ofili: The...Read More -
Chloë Ashby reviews Real Families: Stories of Change for The Guardian
October 9, 2023‘Among the best is Chantal Joffe, who remembers realising while she was studying at the Royal College of Art in the early 1990s not only...Read More -
Works by María Berrío, Doron Langberg and Alice Neel feature in Friends & Lovers at The FLAG Art Foundation
October 6, 2023This expansive group exhibition (6 October 2023–20 January 2024) centers on relationships between artists and their subjects and explores the infinite ways, both past and...Read More -
On view in Cambridge: Real Families: Stories of Change, featuring Chantal Joffe, Alice Neel, Celia Paul, Grayson Perry and Paula Rego
October 5, 2023Bringing together more than 120 artworks spanning painting, photography, sculpture and film, the exhibition (6 October 2023–7 January 2024) asks us to consider what makes...Read More -
On view in Oslo – Alice Neel: Every Person is a New Universe
September 2, 2023Organised in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Barbican Centre in London, this exhibition (on view 2 September–26 November 2023) brings together...Read More -
Alice Neel: Feels Like Home at Orange County Museum of Art
June 22, 2023A curated selection of forty paintings, the exhibition (23 June 2023–7 January 2024) focuses on Neel’s honest, intimate paintings of her home, children, animals, and...Read More -
On view at Tate Modern – Capturing the Moment, featuring Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Alice Neel and Paula Rego
June 13, 2023Subtitled A Journey Through Painting and Photography , the exhibition (13 June 2023–28 January 2024) explores the dynamic relationship between the two mediums through some...Read More -
Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle at the Barbican
February 16, 2023Organised in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this exhibition (16 February–21 May 2023) brings together more than 70 paintings shown alongside archival photography and...Read More -
Acclaim for the Barbican’s major exhibition Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle
February 15, 2023On view from 16 February–21 May 2023, the largest Alice Neel exhibition to date in the UK brings together some 70 paintings alongside archival material,...Read More -
‘The economy of her painting is extraordinary’ – Chantal Joffe on Alice Neel
February 11, 2023Chantal Joffe discusses paintings in the Barbican’s exhibition Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle (16 February–21 May 2023).Read More -
‘She created a space where people could reveal themselves’ – The Guardian previews Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle at the Barbican
February 6, 2023Few 20th-century star artists seem as much their own creation as the painter Alice Neel. While New York thrummed to abstract expressionism, then pop and...Read More -
Talk – The Subject and Me: Katy Hessel, Chantal Joffe and Christina Kimeze on Alice Neel
January 26, 2023This conversation, held at the Barbican on the occasion of the major exhibition Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle , is chaired by art historian,...Read More -
Yayoi Kusama and Alice Neel feature in artnet’s top shows in Europe to see in 2023
January 2, 2023Yayoi Kusama: You, Me and the Balloons at Factory International, Manchester, and Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle at Barbican Centre are featured in artnet’s...Read More -
Alice Neel and Paula Rego are included in The FT’s visual arts roundup of 2022
December 31, 2022Jackie Wullschläger highlights Alice Neel and Paula Rego in The FT’s visual arts round up of the past year. Read in full here Image: Paula...Read More -
Isaac Julien, Alice Neel and Paula Rego feature in The Guardian’s 2023 culture preview
December 27, 2022Isaac Julien, Alice Neel and Paula Rego feature in The Guardian’s art-design to-do list for the year ahead. A solo exhibiton by Isaac Julien is...Read More -
‘The world finally caught up with Alice Neel’: the painter, remembered by her family, featured in The Telegraph
October 9, 2022As new exhibitions open in London and Paris, Lucy Davies profiles the life and career of Alice Neel, featuring an interview with Hartley and Ginny...Read More -
Time Out reviews Alice Neel: There’s Still Another I See
October 7, 2022★★★★ Alice Neel was the chronic chronicler of New York. The painter (1900-1984) depicted the wretched and the beautiful of her chunk of the city,...Read More -
Alice Neel: Un regard engagé at the Centre Pompidou
October 5, 2022The Centre Pompidou's major retrospective (5 October 2022–16 January 2023) highlights the political and social commitment of the painter. Structured in two thematic parts –...Read More -
Alice Neel: People Come First at the de Young Museum, San Francisco
March 11, 2022This ambitious survey (which takes place in San Francisco 12 March–10 July 2022) was previously on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,...Read More -
Alice Neel: People Come First is named Apollo’s exhibition of the year
November 16, 2021It’s hard to imagine there was a time when the hurrahs and plaudits that greeted ‘Alice Neel: People Come First’ at the Metropolitan Museum of...Read More -
Group exhibition MOTHER! now open at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany
October 7, 2021Whether loving or distant, near or far, alive or dead, mothers are the source and existential beginning of human life. There is hardly another term...Read More -
Alice Neel: People Come First at Guggenheim Bilbao
September 17, 2021The ambitious survey Alice Neel: People Come First , which was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2021, travels to...Read More -
Read Hilton Als – Alice Neel’s Portraits of Difference in The New Yorker
April 19, 2021A retrospective at the Met shows the artist’s deep feeling for all that she is not. She had no business moving uptown. Generally, nice white...Read More -
‘It’s Time to Put Alice Neel in Her Rightful Place in the Pantheon’ – Roberta Smith reviews Alice Neel: People Come First
April 1, 2021A large retrospective feels at home in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s grandest galleries and should silence any doubt about the artist’s originality or her...Read More -
Alice Neel: People Come First
March 22, 2021The Met’s exhibition Alice Neel: People Come First, (on view 22 March–1 August 2021) is the first museum retrospective in New York of American artist...Read More -
Getty launches its Recording Artists: Radical Women podcast with an episode dedicated to Alice Neel
November 14, 2019Artists Simone Leigh and Moyra Davey join host Helen Molesworth to discuss the life and work of Alice Neel in the first of a season...Read More -
Now open at MFA Boston – Women Take the Floor, featuring Alice Neel
August 16, 2019This reinstallation of the Level 3 galleries (on view 13 September 2019–3 May 2021) challenges the dominant history of American art by focusing on the...Read More -
Alice Neel in Animals & Us at Turner Contemporary
May 25, 2018The exhibition (25 May–30 September 2018) explores artists’ reflections on the relationship between humans and other animals. At a time when scientists warn that humans...Read More -
The Ethics of Scrutiny, featuring Alice Neel, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
February 15, 2018Curated by artist Daphne Wright, this exhibition (15 February – 2 September 2018) examines the complex relationships between artist and sitter. In Lucian Freud's portraits,...Read More -
Zoe Whitley, Jack Bankowsky and Matthew Higgs select Alice Neel, Uptown in Artforum’s Best of 2017
December 12, 2017Curated by Hilton Als, the exhibition was held at Victoria Miro in London and David Zwirner in New York in 2017.Read More -
Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
October 13, 201713 October 2017 – 14 January 2018 Alice Neel (1900–1984) was one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century. Her psychologically charged...Read More -
Artinfo previews Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life, coming to Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
August 15, 2017A slideshow of images from the forthcoming exhibition (13 October 2017 - 14 January 2018) at Deichtorhallen , Hamburg. View more Image: Alice Neel, Nancy...Read More -
Alice Neel, Uptown reviewed in The White Review
August 9, 2017Becoming Alice Neel. By Rosanna McLaughlin From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel...Read More -
Works by Alice Neel and Chantal Joffe feature in ISelf Collection: The End of Love, at the Whitechapel Gallery
August 9, 201730 August – 26 November 2017 Gallery 7 Free Entry The Whitechapel Gallery’s new autumn 2017 collection display takes its name from Lebanese artist Akram...Read More -
Frieze reviews Alice Neel, Uptown
July 18, 2017By Orit Gat Alice Neel’s recognizable portrait style, with the canvas left raw at places and the subject painted frontally, often seated on a chair...Read More -
Alice Neel’s portrait of artist Faith Ringgold is featured in Tate Modern’s exhibition Soul of a Nation
July 10, 2017Completed in 1977, Neel's portrait of the artist Faith Ringgold is one of a number of portraits of prominent art world subjects painted while Neel...Read More -
FULLY BOOKED Gallery event: Hilton Als talk and book signing
June 16, 2017NOW FULLY BOOKED Wednesday 12 July, 6.30pm In conversation with The Observer's Tim Adams, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author Hilton Als discusses the current exhibition...Read More -
Apollo reviews Alice Neel, Uptown
June 9, 2017Mid-century Harlem through the eyes of Alice Neel. By Grace Banks In 1938 the Pennsylvania-born artist Alice Neel moved from fashionable Greenwich Village in downtown...Read More -
Alice Neel, Uptown featured in i-D
May 27, 2017How Alice Neel's paintings captured the diversity and beauty of harlem. By Felix Petty Hilton Als was going to call the exhibition he's curated of...Read More -
Alice Neel, Uptown featured in AnOther
May 19, 2017The Painter Who Depicted the 'Other' America. By Alexandra Alexa “If you don’t have humanity, you don’t have anything,” said the late painter Alice Neel....Read More -
Rachel Campbell-Johnston reviews Alice Neel, Uptown in The Times
May 19, 2017A soul collector’s love letter to Harlem Rachel Campbell-Johnston is struck by the penetrating gaze of the great American painter Alice Neel Alice Neel came...Read More -
Hettie Judah writes about Alice Neel, Uptown in inews
May 17, 2017Alice Neel: Sixties Harlem and the ‘unseen America’ come to London. By Hettie Judah Is it personal, lived experience that gave Alice Neel her intense,...Read More -
The identity of Alice Neel’s 'Woman', 1966, is revealed in a feature in Scroll.in
May 1, 2017The Indian woman who sat for a notable American portrait in the ’60s and forgot about it – until now. By Saudamini Jain In Donald...Read More -
The Observer interviews Hilton Als, curator of the forthcoming exhibition Alice Neel, Uptown
April 30, 2017Meet the neighbours: Alice Neel’s Harlem portraits. By Tim Adams As a new show opens in London, curator Hilton Als talks about the great 20th-century...Read More -
The People of Harlem, as Painted by Alice Neel, in The Observer
April 29, 2017The great US artist Alice Neel lived and painted in uptown New York when it was almost exclusively black and Hispanic. Hilton Als, curator of...Read More -
Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life at Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles
March 1, 2017From 04 March 2017 to 17 September 2017 This retrospective of paintings by Alice Neel (1900–1984) – one of North America’s most important female artists,...Read More -
Alice Neel featured in the Royal Academy's America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s
February 25, 2017The Sackler Wing Burlington House 25 February - 4 June 2017 The art of 1930s America tells the story of a nation in flux. Artists...Read More -
Alice Neel: Collector of Souls at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
October 23, 2016This first ever Dutch exhibition (5 November 2016 - 12 February 2017) of Alice Neel’s impressively intimate paintings will include around seventy of her works....Read More -
Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life publication reviewed in The New York Review of Books
October 6, 2016The Soul of Alice Neel By Claire Messud More than thirty years after her death, the oeuvre of American painter Alice Neel attracts ever greater...Read More -
Just out: Protest publication
September 23, 2016This publication accompanies Protest at Victoria Miro, 23 September - 5 November 2016, an exhibition of historical and contemporary works by artists concerned with the...Read More -
Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney's Collection featuring works by Alice Neel and Njideka Akunyili Crosby
September 20, 201627 April 2016 - 12 February 2017. Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection offers new perspectives on one of art’s oldest genres. Drawn entirely...Read More -
Alice Neel: The Subject and Me reviewed in the Financial Times
August 19, 2016Alice Neel exhibition in Edinburgh. By Rachel Spence. The US painter best known for her anguished portraits is given a new — and rather less...Read More -
Alice Neel: The Subject and Me reviewed in The Scotsman
August 13, 2016Alice Neel’s life on canvas gets first Scotland exhibition. By Susan Mansfield. In 1955, when America was in the grip of anti-communist paranoia, the FBI...Read More -
Alice Neel: The Subject and Me at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
July 29, 201629 July - 8 October 2016 The Subject and Me tells the story of the turbulent events that shaped Alice Neel’s life, through a retrospective...Read More -
Alice Neel: A Retrospective
June 10, 2016Alice Neel - A Retrospective Ateneum Art Museum , Helsinki 10 June- 2 October 2016 [current] Gemeentemuseum Den Haag 5 November 2016 -12 February 2017...Read More -
Alice Neel: Painter of Modern Life at Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki
Summer / Autumn 201610.6.2016 - 2.10.2016 Painter of Modern Life Alice Neel (1900–1984) was one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century. Her psychologically charged...Read More
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Books
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At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World
Hilton Als, Alex Fialho, Evan Garza, Wayne Koestenbaum, 2024Hardcover, 144 pagesLearn More
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
ISBN: 9781644231302
Dimensions: 21.6 × 26.7 cm -
Alice Neel: There’s Still Another I See
Minna Moore Ede, 2022Otabound with silk screened cloth dust jacket, 95 pagesLearn More
Publisher: Victoria Miro
ISBN: 978-1-914506-03-1 -
Alice Neel: Uptown
Hilton Als (Foreword by Jeremy Lewison), 2017Hardcover, 144 pagesLearn More
Publisher: David Zwirner Books / Victoria Miro
ISBN: 9780993442032
Dimensions: 21.6 x 26.7 cm
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Gallery Exhibitions
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At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World
30 Jan – 8 Mar 2025 London Gallery IThis exhibition highlights the artist’s career-long commitment to depicting the human condition and her practice of painting people from many walks of life, focusing on her paintings of people from queer communities and those who were a part of their circle.Learn More -
Alice Neel: There’s Still Another I See
11 Oct – 12 Nov 2022 London Gallery IIThis exhibition, the first of its kind, focuses on pairings of paintings by Neel of the same sitter, sometimes completed only a year or two apart, sometimes decades apart.Learn More -
Unmasked
12 Feb – 27 Mar 2022 VeniceAn exhibition in Venice of works by Milton Avery, Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Chantal Joffe, Doron Langberg, Alice Neel and Celia Paul.Learn More -
Alice Neel, Uptown
15 Jul – 16 Sep 2017 VeniceA new chapter of the acclaimed exhibition Alice Neel, Uptown, curated by the Pulitzer Prize winning critic and author Hilton Als, is on display at Victoria Miro Venice.Learn More -
Alice Neel, Uptown
18 May – 29 Jul 2017 London Gallery ICurated by the celebrated US critic and author Hilton Als, Alice Neel, this exhibition focuses on paintings made by the artist during the five decades in which she lived and worked in upper Manhattan.Learn More -
House Work
25 Jan – 18 Mar 2017 Victoria Miro MayfairIncluding Mamma Andersson, Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, Marc Chagall, Peter Doig, Adrian Ghenie, David Harrison, Karen Kilimnik, John Kørner, LS Lowry, Alice Neel, Celia Paul, Grayson Perry, Tal R,...Learn More -
Protest
23 Sep – 5 Nov 2016 London Gallery IDoug Aitken, Jules de Balincourt, Vlassis Caniaris, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Christian Holstad, Isaac Julien, Yayoi Kusama, Wangechi Mutu, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Richard Prince, Sarah Sze, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kara Walker.Learn More -
Forces in Nature – curated by Hilton Als
13 Oct – 14 Nov 2015 London Gallery IIA group exhibition curated by the celebrated US critic and author Hilton Als. The exhibition explores the idea of man in nature and includes works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Verne...Learn More -
Alice Neel: My Animals and Other Family
14 Oct – 19 Dec 2014 Victoria Miro MayfairThis exhibition features a group of paintings and drawings in which Neel captures the character and spirit of people and of animals.Learn More -
Alice Neel: Men Only
8 Jun – 29 Jul 2011 London Gallery IIThe 11 paintings in this exhibition show a variety of attitudes, from the erotic to the ironic, in an exhibition that looks at Neel's particular relationship to her male subjects.Learn More -
In the Company of Alice
22 Jun – 30 Jul 2010 London Gallery I'If you do not solve your painting problem in painting human beings, you do not solve it at all'. Gertrude Stein Hernan Bas, John Currin, Verne Dawson, Peter Doig, Marlene...Learn More -
Alice Neel: Works on Paper
18 Apr – 14 May 2009 London Gallery IThe first exhibition of works on paper in the UK by the acclaimed figurative painter Alice Neel.Learn More -
Alice Neel: The Cycle of Life
23 May – 21 Jul 2007 London Gallery IThis exhibition includes paintings from the 1940s to the 1980s and shows subjects ranging from infancy to old age.Learn More -
Alice Neel: A Chronicle of New York 1950 - 1976
1 Jun – 31 Jul 2004 London Gallery IIBringing together paintings from three decades, this exhibition shows the remarkable range of characters that Neel portrayed in paintings that demonstrate a rare combination of painterliness and acute draughtsmanship.Learn More
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Contact Form
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