ALICE NEEL

Early Years

Alice Neel was born in January 1900. Her mother was descended from one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence and her father worked as an accountant for the Pennsylvania Railroad. She grew up in the rural town of Colwyn, outside Philadelphia. Neel took a secretarial job with the Army Air Corps, working for Lieutenant Theodore Sizer, who went on to become an art historian at Yale. She enrolled in evening art classes and later used her savings to pay for the first year of the fine art programme at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. The experience of growing up in a working family and having to save for her own education would inform her later painting practice and subjects.

After graduation in 1925, Neel married Carlos Enrìquez, a Cuban painter. They moved to Havana and Neel gave birth to a daughter who died of diphtheria in 1927. She had another daughter but Enríquez left in 1930, taking the child to Paris in 1930. This prompted a mental health crisis for Neel in which she attempted suicide and was hospitalised for six months. Her subsequent relationships were equally stormy: she lived with a drug-dependent sailor who slashed and burned her artwork; she later had a son with guitarist José Santiago and another with filmmaker Samuel Brody.

Alice Neel: Artworks

Neel’s subjects were often those who had to fight for their place in the world—her works were created throughout the Great Depression, the Second World War and the post-war women’s rights and civil rights movements and featured significant people from those times. Her figurative portraits were not always finished, and were characterised by expressive brushwork, bold outlines, an imaginative colour palette and distortion of the subject. Neel’s huge skill was to reveal aspects of her subjects’ characters through her paintings. She would invite them into her home and they would talk to her. Neel’s neighbours in Spanish Harlem were the subjects of many of her works—these paintings were the works that propelled her to wider recognition.

• Alice and José (1938) depicts Neel in bed with her then-boyfriend, Puerto Rican guitarist José Santiago. Neel’s body is pale in comparison to Santiago’s, although Neel’s red hair sprawls across the pillow like a flame. Both characters have their eyes closed and, while pictured together, there seems to be a distance between them.
• Neel’s artworks discussed many issues of political relevance—in 1965’s Black Draftee (James Hunter) she began to paint a portrait of a man she met in the street, but during the first session he told her that he was going to war in a few days. Neel left the work unfinished.
• Margaret Evans Pregnant (1978) is an example of Neel taking on a subject—pregnant women, nude—that had been previously avoided in Western painting. This portrait shows Margaret (the wife of artist John Evans) sitting on a stool with her figure reflected in the mirror behind her. Neel presents a realistic picture of a pregnant woman, a counterpoint to the soft-edged erotic nudes of the Renaissance.

Alice Neel: Select Posthumous Exhibitions

Select Posthumous Solo Exhibitions

• Alice Neel: Beautifully Imperfect, Serralves Museum, Porto (2026)
• Alice Neel: I am the Century, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin (2025)
• At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World, David Zwirner, Los Angeles (2024)
• Alice Neel: Every Person is a New Universe, Munch, Oslo (2023)
• Alice Neel: Seeing who we are, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2022)
• Alice Neel: People Come First, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (2021)
• Alice Neel: Freedom, David Zwirner, New York City (2019)
• The Subject and Me, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (2016)
• People and Places. Paintings by Alice Neel, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul (2013)
• Painted Truths, Museum of Fine Arts Houston (2010) (and touring)
• Collector of Souls, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008)
• Alice Neel’s Women, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC (2005)
• Alice Neel, organised by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2001) (and touring)

Select Posthumous Group Exhibitions

• In Solidarity: A Benefit for the American Immigration Council and Journey’s End Refugee Services, David Zwirner, New York City (2026)
• Victoria Miro: 40 Years, Victoria Miro, London (2025)
• Drawing the Unspeakable, Towner Eastbourne (2024)
• Bohemia: History of an Idea, 1950–2000, Kunsthalle Praha, Prague (2023)
• Women Painting Women, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2022)
• Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, The Broad, Los Angeles (2019) (and touring)
• Painting the Night, Centre Pompidou-Metz (2018)
• Open Ended: Painting and Sculpture Since 1900, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016)
• Expanding the Field of Painting, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013)
• Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC (2011) (and touring)
• Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis, El Museo del Barrio, New York City (2009)
• The American Century: Art and Culture 1950–2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (1999)
• Against All Odds: The Healing Powers of Art, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (1994) (and touring)

Further Reading

• Official website
• Ocula article about a 2026 exhibition of Neel’s work
• Profile from the National Museum for Women in the Arts
• Biography from The New York Times (1997)

Alice Neel FAQs

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