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Born in 1900 in Merion Square (now Gladwyne), near Philadelphia, Alice Neel led a rich and complicated life. A 1925 graduate of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design), Neel spent a year in Havana, then moved with her husband to New York City, where she remained the rest of her life. In the 1930s, her subjects included the colorful Greenwich Village poets and writers, as well as friends and family. Neel's revolutionary nude portraits of figures such as her young daughter Isabetta and the bohemian icon Joe Gould are still audacious images.
Employed by the W.P.A. during the Great Depression, Neel painted scenes of the city street that reflect her trenchant concern for the dispossessed: striking workers, impoverished families, and the homeless. She was steadfast in depicting the world around her with compassion, acuity and freedom. Portraits of her neighbors in Spanish Harlem employ humor and insight to great effect -- both tender and unforgiving at once.
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Neel's astounding emergence, late in life, corresponded with the dawning of the women's movement and with the art world's reawakened interest in the human figure. Her portraits of fellow artists -- including Andy Warhol, Frank O'Hara, Robert Smithson, and Faith Ringgold -- document a professional world in which Neel was suddenly a seemingly improbable star.
Because Neel never adjusted her painting style to fit prevailing art world fashions, her early work received limited attention. During the last decades of her life, however, Neel achieved great success. Her many honors included the National Women's Caucus for Art outstanding achievement award, which President Jimmy Carter presented to her in 1979.
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