Alice Neel Art
As one of the 20th century’s most influential American artists, Alice Neel was a champion of social justice, which served as a lifelong inspiration for her portraits and figurative paintings.
Born in 1900 in Merion Square, Pennsylvania, Neel grew up in a strict middle-class family that did not support her artistic ambitions. Undaunted, Neel enrolled in the fine arts program at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women — now the Moore College of Art and Design — where she trained with Ashcan School artist George Harding in 1921.
In 1924, Neel furthered her art studies for a period at the Chester Springs summer school of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. There, she met her husband, Cuban artist Carlos Enríquez. After they married, they moved to Cuba and had a daughter. When they returned to the United States to live in New York, in 1927, their infant daughter died from diphtheria. By 1930, the couple’s marriage had disintegrated and Neel suffered another blow when Enríquez took their second child to live with him in Cuba. She experienced a nervous breakdown, and her trauma led to an enduring theme of loss, motherhood and anxiety in her paintings.
Living in Greenwich Village and then uptown, Neel endured additional difficult relationships but immersed herself in her work. She secured a job with the Works Progress Administration, painting urban scenes and portraits of left-wing writers, artists and trade unionists. In 1938, she moved to Spanish Harlem, where she painted stark and honest still-lifes and portraits of friends, family and neighbors. Neel continued to make representational work even as the art world in New York City became enveloped in trendy Abstract Expressionism.
In 1951, Neel had her first solo exhibition showing 17 paintings at the A.C.A. Gallery. That same year, New York’s New Playwrights Theater exhibited 24 of her works, where she was hailed “a pioneer of socialist-realism in American painting.”
In 1960, Neel moved to the Upper West Side and made portraits of public figures such as poet Frank O’Hara, Andy Warhol and artist Robert Smithson.
Neel exhibited widely throughout the U.S. during the 1970s and was championed by art critics and feminist activists. She was honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan. In 1980, her Self-Portrait was shown for the first time in the collection “Selected 20th Century American Self-Portraits” at the Harold Reed Gallery.
Neel’s legacy as a humanist lives on long after her death in 1984. In 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted a retrospective exhibition of her work.
On 1stDibs, discover a range of original Alice Neel paintings and prints.
1980s Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
20th Century Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Screen
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1970s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1930s Realist Alice Neel Art
Paper, Graphite
Late 20th Century Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Foil
Late 20th Century Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1940s Art Deco Alice Neel Art
Paper, Lithograph
1960s Modern Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Pop Art Alice Neel Art
Permanent Marker, Magazine Paper, Lithograph, Offset
1970s Cubist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
Late 20th Century Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1990s Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1990s Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
21st Century and Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
2010s Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Silk, Screen
1940s American Realist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Realist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Abstract Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Paper, Lithograph
1980s Contemporary Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Abstract Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Color, Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph
1980s Expressionist Alice Neel Art
Lithograph