Alice Neel
(1900 - 1984 ) |
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expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. Art Work
| Name: |
Alice Neel |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Merion Square, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Birth: |
1900 |
| Death: |
1984 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity. |
| Medium: |
Oil on canvas |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
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Biography
Alice Hartley Neel was one of the great women painters of the United States during the twentieth century. She challenged contemporary social mores by becoming an artist and an activist in the political realm. Her paintings, including many portraits and nudes, can be said to be shockingly honest and real, showcasing her amazing ability to portray the personality of her subjects. She was born Alice Concross Hartley in 1900 near Philadelphia, the daughter of an accountant for the Pennsylvania Railroad. After high school, she took the necessary steps to become a secretary, which she did for the Army Air Corps between 1918 and 1921. Her career in art can be said to have started on November 21, 1921 when she enrolled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now known as Moore College of Art and Design, where she received multiple awards and honors for her pieces in 1923 and 1924. She also attended the Chester Springs summer school as part of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, learning skills in outdoor portraiture as well as landscape drawing and painting techniques.
In 1925 she married Cuban artist Carlos Enriquez, with whom she will have two children and who becomes one of the leaders of the Cuban vanguardia movement. Neel suffered a great loss in the winter of 1927 when her daughter Santillana died of diphtheria, just weeks away from her first birthday. Less than one year later Neel gave birth to a second daughter, Isabella Lillian Enriquez (or Isabetta), who spent much of her life in Cuba with her father, rather than in New York with Neel.
1930 proved to be the start of a very difficult period in Neel's life. She spent the entire summer this year painting at an excruciating pace, which caused her to experience a nervous breakdown saying she, "experienced a chill that lasted at least eight hours." During her recovery under the watchful care of her mother, Neel wrote: "Carlos went away. The nights were horrible at first ... I dreamed Isabetta died and we buried her right beside Santillana."
The year 1931 also started off with many difficulties for Neel. In January Enriquez returned to her at her parents' home in Pennsylvania when she attempted suicide by means of her parents' gas oven. Upon her required return to the Pennsylvania Orthopedic Hospital she threatened to swallow glass shards, thus she was put on a suicide watch through Easter. Once she was able to return to the regular ward in the hospital she was allowed to continue her art, a practice that was contrary to the treatment of the time for nervous disorders, which normally required that the patient to discontinue anything from their professional lives.
Alice Neel returned to her art later that year after her recovery and found herself exhibiting her art continuously, a practice that would endure throughout the rest of her life. Much of Neel's art was not received well and in a show titled First Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit in 1932 her Degenerate Madonna piece had to be removed because of protests by the Catholic Church. Neel also spent many years under the employment of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a program funded by the government.
In the summer of 1934 her family came to visit her on the Jersey Shore, and this marks the beginning of some of her most famous nudes as she painted a nude portrait of her daughter Isabetta, who was at the time about 6 years old. Neel experienced a great professional loss in December of 1934 when her close friend and on-off lover Kenneth Doolittle burned more than 300 of her drawings and watercolors and slashed around 50 of her oil paintings, including the nude she had done of Isabetta, which she later repainted.
In Neel's personal life she became the lover of multiple married men, who subsequently left their wives and children to pursue Neel. The wives and children they abandoned, interestingly enough, often became subjects for some of Neel's works. In September of 1939, Neel gave birth to her third child, a boy named Neel, whose father was Jose Santiago Negron, one of her lovers who left his family. A year later she met photographer and filmmaker, Sam Brody, also a married man, and subsequently had another son in 1941.
In 1955 Alice Neel was interviewed and faced speculation from the FBI for her sporadic involvement with the Communist party. Her sons later recounted that at this time, Neel asked her investigators to sit for portraits, an offer which they chose not to accept. Throughout 1969 Neel spent little time in the United States, instead traveling all over the world. Her portrait of Kate Millett appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1970 and the editor of the magazine asked Neel to paint portraits of various public figures when the need arose.
Neel was a very political person who could often be seen participating in various protests, mainly involving museums, for the rights of both women and African Americans. She also received multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts throughout her career. In 1984 this dynamic woman artist discovered, at a routine doctor's visit, that she had advanced colon cancer, which had spread to her liver. She immediately underwent surgery and chemotherapy, after which she continued her demanding schedule, which included making television appearances. Unfortunately, Alice Neel could not beat her fight with cancer and she died at her home in New York City, with her family by her side on October 13, 1984. She is buried close to her studio in Vermont and obituaries noted her courage, her commitment to art, and her enormous role in changing the face of art. Alice Neel, like many artists, did not achieve or receive success until late in her career and life. Much of her work was not seen before 1970, partly due to the fact that she was a woman and painted in her home without the support of a gallery. However, after this point, she received many honors including one, which was bestowed to her by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the National Women's Caucus for Art outstanding achievement award.
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Samples of Work
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