Barbican Centre, London
February 2023
February 16–May 20, 2023
This is the largest exhibition to date in the UK of American artist Alice Neel whose vivid portraits capture the shifting social and political context of the American twentieth century.
Describing herself as ‘a collector of souls’, Neel worked in New York during a period in which figurative painting was deeply unfashionable. Crowned the ‘court painter of the underground,' her canvases celebrate those who were too often marginalized in society: labor leaders, Black and Puerto Rican children, pregnant women, Greenwich Village eccentrics, civil rights activists and queer performers. A member of the US Communist Party, Neel and her radical portraits caught the attention of the FBI. In recent years, the politics of her work has given her cult status among a younger generation of artists.
Organized in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this exhibition brings together over 70 of Neel’s most vibrant paintings, shown alongside archival photography and film, bringing to life what she called ’the swirl of the era’.
Learn more at Barbican.