Alice Neel, Uptown

Curated by Hilton Als, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism,Alice Neel, Uptown was exhibited at David Zwirner in New York from February 23 – April 22, and was on view at Victoria Miro in London through July 29.

One of the foremost American figurative painters of the twentieth century, Neel is known for her portraits of family, friends, and neighbors as well as the writers, poets, and other cultural and political figures she encountered in a career spanning the 1920s to the 1980s. Alice Neel, Uptown presented works made during the five decades Neel spent in upper Manhattan, first in Spanish Harlem, where she moved in 1938, and later the Upper West Side just south of Harlem, where she lived from 1962 until 1984.

Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication with texts highlighting specific paintings. Writing in his characteristic narrative style, Als introduces the sitters and offers insights into Neel, her work, and process while adding his personal perspective. "Might one call Neel a kind of essayist of the canvas?" Als asks in the book's introduction. "…I was immediately consumed by the stories she worked so hard to tell: about loneliness, togetherness, and the drama of self-presentation, spurred by the drama of being…Alice Neel, Uptown, the first comprehensive look at Neel's portraits of people of color, is an attempt to honor not only what Neel saw, but the generosity behind her seeing."

Published by David Zwirner Books | Victoria Miro, where the exhibition is being presented in London.

Read more: The New York Timesreview of the exhibition and excerpts from the publication in The New Yorker andThe Brooklyn Rail.