McNeely (1936–2023) emerged as an artist in New York in the late ’60s, turning away from the dominant influence of Abstract Expressionism to focus on figuration and the depiction of extreme physical states. She was a central figure of several of the era’s groundbreaking artist and activist collectives and developed her practice in close dialogue with peers such as Louise Bourgeois, Alice Neel, Joan Semmel, and Anita Steckel. Foregrounding figuration, anti-war activism, and resistance to censorship, these artists, in community, sought to challenge social and institutional constraints.

In her paintings, McNeely honed in on the female figure, tackling taboos regarding nudity, sexuality, and biological functions. Drawing on aspects of her own physiology, she imagined bodies radically deconstructed and contorted into near-impossible positions. Bold yet jarring, the artist’s reconfigurations of anatomy were indelibly shaped by personal experiences of life-threatening illnesses, sexism, abortion, and disability—conditions which informed her profound and unflinching understanding of the body as a site of struggle, learning, and wisdom. Painting through engaged observation and a deeply embodied knowledge, McNeely expressed pleasure and pain held in tension, merging the personal and political in new and challenging ways.

The works on view in the exhibition reflect McNeely’s lifelong commitment to channeling emotional, physical, and social conditions. Paintings from the late ’60s reveal her confident command of color and line—as in The Yellow Womb (1969), where intensely saturated hues animate a composition of fragmenting body parts, infusing each element with a sense of expanding vibrancy. Difficult subjects and provocative motifs are treated with seductive delicacy and care, balancing realistic detail with expressive and gestural brushwork. In later decades, McNeely developed the Windows series, represented here by Umbrella Inside (1980–2011). The series saw the artist establish her use of windows, metal bars, and spiked grills as framing devices, structures that simultaneously enclose the figure and destabilize the pictorial space. By the ’90s, such motifs were absorbed into scenes of sensuality and domesticity, signaling both an integration of earlier constraints and their transformation. At times, as in Balance (2012), the objects themselves dissolve, giving way to resonant and immersive fields of empty space. Throughout the works on display, the painted surface is revealed as an ambiguous yet exciting site of both confinement and resistance.

McNeely’s works on paper offer further insights into her compositional thinking. Often produced alongside larger paintings, her drawings trace the early formation of ideas and their evolution over time. The selection on view includes preparatory studies, intimate scenes of the artist with her partner, and multimedia experiments employing printmaking techniques. The large pastel on paper Untitled (c. 1990s) stands as an independent work, echoing the twisted, suspended figures found in McNeely’s most celebrated paintings.

Across these myriad encounters, the exhibition invites a timely revisitation of McNeely’s life and practice— recognizing a historical visionary whose work remains urgently contemporary. Juanita McNeely is presented in cooperation with James Fuentes Gallery, New York. Curation is led by Victoria Gelfand-Magalhaes in collaboration with Lévy Gorvy Dayan London team members Tucker Drew and Tilde Fredholm.

Courtesy Lévy Gorvy Dayan.