Artist

Alice Neel

born Merion Square, PA 1900-died New York City 1984
Media - portrait_image_114775.jpg - 90471
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, © Estate of Alice Neel, 1980
Also known as
  • Alice Hartley Neel
Born
Merion Square, Pennsylvania, United States
Died
New York, New York, United States
Biography

Born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, Alice Neel graduated from the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art) in 1925. She was a portrait painter whose work cut across the social classes. She once described herself as a "collector of souls," and lived much of her adult life in the Spanish Harlem section of New York City. From 1935 to 1943, Neel was employed by the W.P.A. Federal Art Project, Easel Division. She was also included in a group exhibition of acclaimed women artists in Washington, D.C., in 1979, entitled Women's Caucus for Art Honors Bishop, Burke, Neel, Nevelson, O'Keeffe.

Therese Thau Heyman Posters American Style (New York and Washington, D.C.: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the National Museum of American Art, 1998)

Works by this artist (1 item)

Angel Rodríguez-Díaz, The Protagonist of an Endless Story, 1993, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1996.19, © 1993, Angel Rodriguez-Diaz
The Protagonist of an Endless Story
Date1993
oil on canvas
Not on view

Related Books

crosscurrents_500.jpg
Crosscurrents: Modern Art from the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Collection
In eighty-eight striking paintings and sculptures, Crosscurrents captures modernism as it moved from early abstractions by O’Keeffe, to Picasso and Pollock in midcentury, to pop riffs on contemporary culture by Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, and Tom Wesselmann—all illustrating the complexity and energy of a distinctly American modernism.