Alice Neel: The Early Years

I paint to try to reveal the struggle, tragedy and joy of life.
—Alice Neel¹

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Alice Neel (1900–1984) from the first decades of the artist’s influential career. On view at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location, the focused presentation centers on works from the 1930s through the 1950s, and includes interiors, memory paintings, New York City streetscapes, and portraits of family and others close to Neel. At turns atmospheric, somber, and deeply personal, these works offer a chronological account of this significant period of Neel’s life and work, and engage themes of interiority, intimacy, and the negotiation between private and public, which continue to resonate in our present moment. The Early Years is curated by gallery Senior Partner Bellatrix Hubert and Ginny Neel.

¹ Alice Neel, quoted in “The Art of Portraiture, in the Words of Four New York Artists,” The New York Times (October 31, 1976), p. D29.
Image: Alice Neel, Spanish Party, 1939 (detail)

Location

537 West 20th Street New York

Dates

September 9—October 16, 2021

Curators

Gallery Senior Partner Bellatrix Hubert, Ginny Neel

Artist

The Early Years

“I paint to try to reveal the struggle, tragedy and joy of life.”

—Alice Neel

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Painted from life and from memory in New York—first in Greenwich Village, and later in Spanish Harlem, where Neel lived until 1962 before moving to the Upper West Side—the works in this exhibition examine the foundational decades of Neel’s career, when she was struggling as an artist and mother during a time of social and economic upheaval and change. They reflect her commitment to figuration while abstraction was ascendant as well as her sensitivity and compassion toward her subjects. She is now widely acknowledged as one of the foremost American artists of the twentieth century, and these canvases and drawings register an introspective mood and the early personal struggles Neel faced.

Alice Neel

Harlem River, 1927

Watercolor on paper

14 1/2 x 19 5/8 inches (36.8 x 49.8 cm)
Framed: 22 x 26 7/8 inches (55.9 x 68.3 cm)

Harlem River was made while Neel briefly lived, from 1927 to 1930, at 1725 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, which overlooked the Harlem River. She and Carlos Enríquez, her husband at the time, moved there in the winter of 1927 with their infant daughter Santillana (who tragically died soon thereafter of diphtheria). The couple's second daughter, Isabetta, was born while they lived at that address.

Alice Neel and Carlos on a bench at Chester Springs, 1924. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel and Carlos on a bench at Chester Springs, 1924. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel and Santillana, Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1927 (detail). Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel.

Alice Neel and Santillana, Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1927 (detail). Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel.

My house is beside a river of lead
I build a snow woman
and hold her breasts
my brown fingers dream of blood red
warm earth in cuba

I burn my snow woman’s
black coal eyes
and still I am not warm

water has mixed with the marrow of my bones
my spine a ramified icicle

my snow woman told me of a saxon milk white doe
I thought she meant a dough to make bread
or the milk white do of the piano

the grey of this sad house
beside the river of lead

my tropical soul
frozen in ice
molded with pain

—Alice Neel, undated poem (c. 1930)

Alice Neel

Mother and Child (Alice), 1930

Oil on canvas

26 x 22 inches (66 x 55.9 cm)
Framed: 28 7/8 x 24 7/8 inches (73.3 x 63.2 cm)

Painted three years after her daughter Santillana’s death, Mother and Child (Alice) depicts Neel holding her infant, who was buried in the Neel family plot in Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. As Phoebe Hoban notes in her biography of Neel, “There are no tombstones marking any of the Neel family graves, which are located in the Sunnyside Section of Arlington, perhaps because they couldn’t afford them.”

Alice Neel

Nadya and the Wolf, 1932

Oil on canvas

30 1/8 x 23 5/8 inches (76.5 x 60 cm)
Framed: 32 7/8 x 26 1/2 inches (83.5 x 67.3 cm)

Alice Neel

Nadya Nude, 1933

Oil on canvas

24 x 31 inches (61 x 78.7 cm)
Framed: 26 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches (67.9 x 85.7 cm)

Neel’s friend Nadya Olyanova was the model for Nadya Nude. A graphologist, Olyanova was a frequent subject of Neel’s work in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Nadya Nude—in Neel's own words, 'a New York Olympia'—as Ann Temkin writes, ”shows a woman not as a formulaic ... alluring figure [...] but as the powerful personality embodied in the figure's sheer mass, in its dark intensity and immodest pose.”

Alice Neel and Nadya Olyanova, c. 1931–1932. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel and Nadya Olyanova, c. 1931–1932. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel while visiting Nadya Olyanova in Stockton, New Jersey, 1932. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel while visiting Nadya Olyanova in Stockton, New Jersey, 1932. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel and Nadya Olyanova, 1931 (detail). Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel and Nadya Olyanova, 1931 (detail). Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

“Neel's remarkable revisions of the conventions for painting nudes extended to women as well as to men. For a woman who is a painter rather than a 'painting' the stakes are highest in the female nude....A woman artist can mimic the convention of the nude female as passive object or else must invent an image that is truer to her own active experience. To do that, Neel had to find alternative precedents, radical exceptions in German and Austrian Expressionism and in provocative French paintings such as Manet's Olympia (1863).”

—Ann Temkin, “Alice Neel: Self and Others,” in Alice Neel, 2000

Alice Neel

Village Party, 1933

Oil on canvas

30 1/2 x 32 inches (77.5 x 81.3 cm)
Framed: 41 x 42 1/4 inches (104.1 x 107.3 cm)

In Village Party, Neel paints herself with her back to the viewer, wearing a bright red hat, and to her left is her lover Kenneth Doolittle. Neel and Doolittle immersed themselves in the bohemian and intellectual circle while living at 33 1/2 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village. While the scene at first seems lively, the faces of the sitters reveal feelings of boredom, annoyance, or perhaps even contempt toward the others seated at their table. Doolittle is shown possessively clasping Neel’s hand.

Alice Neel with Kenneth Doolittle, c. 1932–1934. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel. The burn marks remain from an episode from December 1934 in which Doolittle, who at the time was living with Neel in an apartment in Greenwich Village, destroyed more than fifty of the artist’s paintings and three hundred of her works on paper, as well as numerous personal effects. As Neel said later, “Doolittle was a real male chauvinist. He thought he owned me.”

Alice Neel with Kenneth Doolittle, c. 1932–1934. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel. The burn marks remain from an episode from December 1934 in which Doolittle, who at the time was living with Neel in an apartment in Greenwich Village, destroyed more than fifty of the artist’s paintings and three hundred of her works on paper, as well as numerous personal effects. As Neel said later, “Doolittle was a real male chauvinist. He thought he owned me.”

While Neel is known for her portraits of live sitters, she often painted from memory. As Ann Temkin writes: “Many of her most stirring pictures from the 1940s and 1950s... were painted from memory. While these do not differ definitively from the portraits made during sittings, in general their palette and design are more eccentrically stylized; pattern and rhythm take on a stronger life of their own.”

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Neel lived with José Santiago Negron, a Puerto Rican musician she met at a downtown nightclub, between 1935 and 1939, first in Greenwich Village, and later in Spanish Harlem. Spanish Party depicts a crowded apartment filled with members of Negron’s family. The dimly lit scene of couples dancing and a musician playing guitar recalls the environment of the sort of downtown nightclub Neel frequented during this time. The painting also features children of various ages playing among their preoccupied parents, including an infant in a crib. A dreamlike image that is at once celebratory and mysterious, this painting seems to blur asynchronous moments of life with people and memories from Neel’s personal autobiography (and, possibly, paintings).

Alice Neel

Spanish Party, 1939

Oil on canvas

36 x 36 inches (91.4 x 91.4 cm)
Framed: 39 1/2 x 39 3/8 inches (100.3 x 100 cm)

“I used to work at night when the baby was sleeping. I was more an artist than anything, if you decide you are going to have children and give up painting during the time you have them, you give it up forever. Or if you don’t, you just become a dilettante. It must be a continuous thing.”

—Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Richard in High Chair, 1952

Oil on canvas

23 x 19 3/8 inches (58.4 x 49.2 cm)
Framed: 25 3/4 x 21 7/8 inches (65.4 x 55.6 cm)

Richard, Neel’s son with Negron, was born in 1939. In December of the same year, Negron left Neel and Richard. In Richard in High Chair, the artist paints the baby with flailing arms and his head bent at an unnatural angle. Despite his rosy cheeks and big eyes, there is a sense of unease in this image, which the artist highlights with almost frantic brushstrokes and yellow coloration. As a working artist and mother, Neel felt the strain that both roles placed on her.

Alice Neel

Sheila, 1937

Oil on canvas

Image: 26 x 20 1/8 inches (66 x 51.1 cm)
Framed: 28 7/8 x 22 7/8 inches (73.3 x 58.1 cm)

Born four years before Richard, Sheila was the daughter of José Santiago Negron and his first wife.

All proceeds from the sale of this painting will go to Imaging the World, an organization that saves lives by bringing modern imaging technology, innovation, education, and capacity strengthening to rural communities around the world, with plans to positively impact 5 million people.

Alice Neel

Spanish Mother and Child, 1942

Ink on paper

13 x 8 inches (33 x 20.3 cm)
Framed: 20 5/8 x 15 1/8 inches (52.4 x 38.4 cm)

In Spanish Mother and Child, Neel presents a pensive, somewhat melancholic portrait. Not initially intended for public view, Neel’s drawings reveal a more private and intimate nature than her paintings and as such reflect her deep sensitivity to these subjects. Yet they are far from sentimental and she readily stripped her sitters of their masks, foregrounding rather the incongruous, the awkward, and, at times, the comical.

“I have never felt strange in East Harlem because of the fine and hospitable humanity I find all around me. East Harlem is like a battlefield of humanism, and I am on the side of the people there.”

—Alice Neel

Alice Neel, New York, c. 1940. Archives of the Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel, New York, c. 1940. Archives of the Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Christmas, Hartley and Richard, c. 1943

Oil on canvas

60 x 38 inches (152.4 x 96.5 cm)
Framed: 63 3/8 x 41 3/8 inches (161 x 105.1 cm)

In Christmas, Hartley and Richard, Neel paints her sons at Christmastime, yet the mood is solemn and the scene disquieting. The tree is sparse and the tinsel seems to drip off of its branches. Neel's youngest child, Hartley, is missing a sock, and gazes vacantly. Richard is perched on a brightly colored rocking horse which Hartley remembers his mother had found on the street and repainted.

Hartley and Richard on the rocking horse, c. 1944. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Hartley and Richard on the rocking horse, c. 1944. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel with Richard and Hartley, New York, 1943. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Alice Neel with Richard and Hartley, New York, 1943. Archives of The Estate of Alice Neel

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Alice Neel

Sam and Hartley, c. 1945

Oil on canvas

30 x 27 inches (76.2 x 68.6 cm)
Framed: 33 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (84.5 x 76.8 cm)

Throughout her career, Neel expressed an interest in conveying the complexities and nuances of familial relationships. Her strong powers of observation and unique ability to empathize are reflected in her psychologically suffused portraiture, which captures the individuality of her sitters in an unforgiving, yet tender way.

Alice Neel, Woman in Green Hat, c. 1943

Alice Neel, Woman in Green Hat, c. 1943

Alice Neel, Conversation on a Bus, 1944

Alice Neel, Conversation on a Bus, 1944

Alice Neel, The Cafeteria, 1938

Alice Neel, The Cafeteria, 1938

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

“One Sunday in 1943 I took my sons for a walk. They were little kids, two and four. I saw a woman walking by. So when I came back home and gave the children their nap, I painted her from memory. I finished it up that night when they were again asleep. I love it. It has no technique, none of the shibboleths of studied artistry. It’s just pure expression.”

—Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Dead Father, 1946

Oil on canvas

19 3/4 x 28 1/8 inches (50.2 x 71.4 cm)
Framed: 22 1/2 x 30 7/8 inches (57.2 x 78.4 cm)

“He [my father] was a good and kind man, and his head still looked noble. I didn't set out to memorize him because I was too affected. But the image printed itself. So I did him in his coffin the next day, after I returned to New York.”

—Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Fire Escape, 1948

Oil on canvas

34 x 25 inches (86.4 x 63.5 cm)
Framed: 37 x 27 7/8 inches (94 x 70.8 cm)

While she is known primarily as a painter of people, Neel painted a number of works with views of the nearby buildings as seen from her windows. Fire Escape, painted while the artist lived in Spanish Harlem, shows the view outside her kitchen. The iron grating hint at the sense of confinement Neel may have felt while working and living with two young sons in a railroad style apartment.

Alice Neel

Self-Portrait Skull, 1958

Ink on paper

11 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches (29.8 x 22.2 cm)
Framed: 19 x 15 3/4 inches (48.3 x 40 cm)

Self-Portrait Skull is a harrowing depiction Neel produced after Sam Brody, her partner of almost twenty years and Hartley’s father, left her in 1958. The ink drawing’s startling subject matter, coupled with the scribbled, agitated effect of Neel’s linework, powerfully captures psychological tension.

Alice Neel

Hartley, 1957

Oil on canvas

39 x 25 inches (99.1 x 63.5 cm)
Framed: 42 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches (108 x 72.4 cm)

Alice Neel

Richard, 1959

Oil on canvas

38 x 22 inches (96.5 x 55.9 cm)
Framed: 40 7/8 x 24 7/8 inches (103.8 x 63.2 cm)

“A good portrait of mine has even more than just the accurate features. It has some other thing. If I have any talent in relation to people, apart from planning the whole canvas, it is my identification with them. I get so identified when I paint them, when they go home I feel frightful. I have no self—I have gone into this other person.… It is my way of overcoming the alienation. It is my ticket to reality.”

—Alice Neel

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Installation view, Alice Neel: The Early Years, David Zwirner, New York, 2021

Alice Neel: People Come First is the first museum retrospective of Neel’s work in twenty years. First presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and opening on September 17, 2021, at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, this unprecedented survey positions Neel as one of the twentieth century’s most radical painters. The exhibition, which presents approximately one hundred paintings, drawings, and watercolors, “confirms Neel as equal if not superior to artists like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon and destined for icon status on the order of Vincent van Gogh and David Hockney,” writes Roberta Smith in The New York Times. Neel's work is also featured in CLOSE-UP at Foundation Beyeler, opening September 19, 2021.

Available in print and as an e-book, Phoebe Hoban’s definitive biography documents the life of the artist in vivid detail, creating a portrait as incisive as Neel’s relentlessly honest paintings.

Learn More about Works by Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Under Brooklyn Bridge, 1932

Oil on canvas

24 1/4 x 30 inches (61.6 x 76.2 cm)
Framed: 27 x 32 3/4 inches (68.6 x 83.2 cm)

Alice Neel

Village Party, 1933

Oil on canvas

30 1/2 x 32 inches (77.5 x 81.3 cm)
Framed: 41 x 42 1/4 inches (104.1 x 107.3 cm)

Alice Neel

Movie Lobby, 1932

Oil on canvas

36 x 30 1/4 inches (91.4 x 76.8 cm)
Framed: 38 3/4 x 33 inches (98.4 x 83.8 cm)

Alice Neel

Nadya Nude, 1933

Oil on canvas

24 x 31 inches (61 x 78.7 cm)
Framed: 26 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches (67.9 x 85.7 cm)

Alice Neel

Nadya and the Wolf, 1932

Oil on canvas

30 1/8 x 23 5/8 inches (76.5 x 60 cm)
Framed: 32 7/8 x 26 1/2 inches (83.5 x 67.3 cm)

Alice Neel

Mother and Child (Alice), 1930

Oil on canvas

26 x 22 inches (66 x 55.9 cm)
Framed: 28 7/8 x 24 7/8 inches (73.3 x 63.2 cm)

Alice Neel

Harlem River, 1927

Watercolor on paper

14 1/2 x 19 5/8 inches (36.8 x 49.8 cm)
Framed: 22 x 26 7/8 inches (55.9 x 68.3 cm)

Alice Neel

Harlem River, 1928

Oil on canvas

20 x 26 inches (50.8 x 66 cm)
Framed: 27 7/8 x 34 inches (70.8 x 86.4 cm)

Alice Neel

Jose with Guitar, 1936

Oil on canvas

22 x 20 inches (55.9 x 50.8 cm)
Framed: 25 x 22 7/8 inches (63.5 x 58.1 cm)

Alice Neel

Nuns in the Park, 1946

Oil on canvas

24 1/4 x 26 1/4 inches (61.6 x 66.7 cm)
Framed: 26 7/8 x 29 inches (68.3 x 73.7 cm)

Alice Neel

Flight into Egypt, 1939

Oil on canvas

30 1/4 x 27 inches (76.8 x 68.6 cm)
Framed: 38 x 34 7/8 inches (96.5 x 88.6 cm)

Alice Neel

Spanish Party, 1939

Oil on canvas

36 x 36 inches (91.4 x 91.4 cm)
Framed: 39 1/2 x 39 3/8 inches (100.3 x 100 cm)

Alice Neel

Building in Harlem, c. 1945

Oil on canvas

34 x 24 1/8 inches (86.4 x 61.3 cm)
Framed: 37 x 27 inches (94 x 68.6 cm)

Alice Neel

Richard in High Chair, 1952

Oil on canvas

23 x 19 3/8 inches (58.4 x 49.2 cm)
Framed: 25 3/4 x 21 7/8 inches (65.4 x 55.6 cm)

Alice Neel

Harlem Nocturne, 1952

Oil on canvas

24 x 21 1/8 inches (61 x 53.7 cm)
Framed: 26 3/4 x 24 inches (67.9 x 61 cm)

Alice Neel

Spanish Mother and Child, 1942

Ink on paper

13 x 8 inches (33 x 20.3 cm)
Framed: 20 5/8 x 15 1/8 inches (52.4 x 38.4 cm)

Alice Neel

Untitled, 1942

Ink on paper

9 x 8 5/8 inches (22.9 x 21.9 cm)
Framed: 16 5/8 x 15 7/8 inches (42.2 x 40.3 cm)

Alice Neel

John in Striped Shirt, 1958

Oil on board

27 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches (70.5 x 55.2 cm)
Framed: 36 7/8 x 30 7/8 inches (93.7 x 78.4 cm)

Alice Neel

Sam and Hartley, c. 1945

Oil on canvas

30 x 27 inches (76.2 x 68.6 cm)
Framed: 33 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches (84.5 x 76.8 cm)

Alice Neel

Christmas, Hartley and Richard, c. 1943

Oil on canvas

60 x 38 inches (152.4 x 96.5 cm)
Framed: 63 3/8 x 41 3/8 inches (161 x 105.1 cm)

Alice Neel

Woman in Green Hat, c. 1943

Oil on canvas

20 1/8 x 16 inches (51.1 x 40.6 cm)
Framed: 23 x 19 inches (58.4 x 48.3 cm)

Alice Neel

Conversation on a Bus, 1944

Oil on canvas

29 x 22 inches (73.7 x 55.9 cm)
Framed: 32 x 24 7/8 inches (81.3 x 63.2 cm)

Alice Neel

The Cafeteria, 1938

Oil on canvas

20 x 16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Framed: 22 7/8 x 18 7/8 inches (58.1 x 47.9 cm)

Alice Neel

Fish Market, 1947

Oil on canvas

30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61 cm)
Framed: 32 3/4 x 26 3/8 inches (83.2 x 67 cm)

Alice Neel

Dead Father, 1946

Oil on canvas

19 3/4 x 28 1/8 inches (50.2 x 71.4 cm)
Framed: 22 1/2 x 30 7/8 inches (57.2 x 78.4 cm)

Alice Neel

My Mother, 1952

Oil on canvas

35 7/8 x 29 inches (91.1 x 73.7 cm)
Framed: 38 1/2 x 31 7/8 inches (97.8 x 81 cm)

Alice Neel

Self-Portrait Skull, 1958

Ink on paper

11 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches (29.8 x 22.2 cm)
Framed: 19 x 15 3/4 inches (48.3 x 40 cm)

Alice Neel

John with Bowl of Fruit, 1949

Oil on canvas

30 x 24 inches (76.2 x 61 cm)
Framed: 32 3/4 x 26 3/4 inches (83.2 x 67.9 cm)

Alice Neel

Untitled, 1958

Oil on canvas

32 1/4 x 17 1/4 inches (81.9 x 43.8 cm)
Framed: 35 x 19 7/8 inches (88.9 x 50.5 cm)

Alice Neel

Richard, 1959

Oil on canvas

38 x 22 inches (96.5 x 55.9 cm)
Framed: 40 7/8 x 24 7/8 inches (103.8 x 63.2 cm)

Alice Neel

Hartley, 1957

Oil on canvas

39 x 25 inches (99.1 x 63.5 cm)
Framed: 42 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches (108 x 72.4 cm)

Alice Neel

Fire Escape, 1948

Oil on canvas

34 x 25 inches (86.4 x 63.5 cm)
Framed: 37 x 27 7/8 inches (94 x 70.8 cm)

Alice Neel

Sam, 1954

Oil on Masonite

29 7/8 x 24 1/4 inches (75.9 x 61.6 cm)
Framed: 33 x 26 3/4 inches (83.8 x 67.9 cm)

Alice Neel

Caroline Hicks, 1955

Charcoal, india ink, and chalk on paper

15 5/8 x 12 1/2 inches (39.7 x 31.8 cm)
Framed: 23 x 19 3/4 inches (58.4 x 50.2 cm)

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