The uncomfortable honesty of portraiture: when the artist looks into you - Alice Neal's story.

Alice Neel is an artist who made no compromises, portraying her characters with frightening honesty and rare emotional depth. Her biography contains everything: tragedy, psychiatric hospital, Harlem, the Beat Generation, and, of course, portraits in which life pulsates. This article is a look at the fate and work of a woman who became a symbol of uncompromising 20th century art.

Jeffrey Hendrix and Brian Buchak. 1978

January 28, 2025 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Alice Neel (1900-1984), one of the most original figures of American art of the 20th century. An artist whose portraits did not simply depict appearance, but seemed to penetrate into the soul of the model.

Benny and Mary Ellen Andrews. 1972

Alice Neel was born in Pennsylvania in 1900. After graduating from high school in 1918, she acted very generously towards her parents. She passed her exams and took a high-paying clerical job to help support her family financially. However, art already attracted her: in parallel with her work, she attended evening art courses in Philadelphia. Three years later, in 1921, Alice entered the prestigious School of Design for Women, now known as Moore College of Art & Design.

Man in a jacket

After receiving an art education in 1925, she married and moved with her husband to New York. There the young family faced material difficulties, they literally starved. And in 1926 they gave birth to a daughter. However, happiness was short-lived, a year later the girl dies. Loss, which left a deep trace, coincided with a new shock: her husband left for Paris, promising to call Alice later, but this unfortunately did not happen. Finding herself alone, having experienced an emotional breakdown, she undergoes treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Returning to painting becomes a kind of healing for her. The works of the early 1930s are filled with personal pain and Alice literally pours her trials onto the canvas.

Man in a white T-shirt

In the late 1930s, Neel moved to Spanish Harlem with her new boyfriend. This area of New York, with its diversity of faces and stories, became an inexhaustible source of inspiration for her. Her sons, Richard (in 1939) and Hartley (in 1941), were born here. The artist’s Harlem portraits are full of sympathy, warmth, and a keen interest in the fates of ordinary people.

Ethel Ashton. 1930

Maturity as an artist came to her in the turbulent 1930s. At that time, Neil created a gallery of portraits of representatives of the left intelligentsia, many of these works, alas, have not survived. An unexpected turn in her biography was her participation in the film “Tell the Daisy” filmed in 1959, based on the script by Jack Kerouac. Along with Alice, the legends of the beat generation played in the film: poet Allen Ginsberg, artist Larry Rivers and musician David Amram. The film, filmed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, became a kind of manifesto of the entire era.

House

True recognition came to the artist only in the 1960s and 70s. In 1965, her solo exhibition at the Graham Gallery (New York) aroused keen interest. And real fame came in the mid-70s, when Alice painted one of her most famous portraits, the legendary Andy Warhol. In the painting, the cult artist is depicted naked to the waist, with his eyes closed, vulnerable and almost tragic; critics call this image the pinnacle of Neel's work.

Pregnant Maria.1964

Interestingly, in the last year of her life Alice herself becomes the heroine of the portrait, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe captured her with closed eyes, as if referring to Warhol's portrait. This shot became a kind of visual point of her life's journey.

Richard Gibbs. 1954

Andy Warhol. 1970

Among Alice Neel's best-known works is her Self-Portrait, in which she depicts herself nude at the age of 70, a rare vision in art of the body of an aging woman.

Self-portrait. 1980

The artist passed away in New York City on October 13, 1984, at the age of 84, but interest in her legacy has not waned. She is considered one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century. In 2007, Alice's grandson, filmmaker Andrew Neal, made a documentary about her, “Alice Neal”, presenting to the public not only her work, but also the personal drama of the artist, who remained true to her lifelong view of art and humanity.

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