5 Enduring Paintings By Alice Neel

The retrospective of American artist Alice Neel at London’s Barbican Centre is long overdue. First held in New York in 2021, the show travelled to the Pompidou Centre in 2022 and is now in London, titled Hot Off the Griddle, and finally putting Neel’s work in front of a new and engaged audience.

Born in Pennsylvania, Neel created her art between Havana and New York from the 1920s through to the 1980s, exploring the social and economic landscape of the time, as well as looking at love, comedy and family. The result is a body of work that takes an unvarnished view on the world around her, creating portraits of writers, activists, friends and later in her life, celebrities. As the show opens, Grace Banks selects five of Neel’s most pertinent works.

Kenneth Fearing, 1935

In 1930 Alice Neel had a breakdown which she described as a time where creatively, she “didn’t do anything but fall apart and go to pieces.” Her daughter Santillana had died of diptheria just before her first birthday, and Neel was estranged from her husband Enrique, who was still living in Havana where she had spent the first years of marriage with him between 1925 and 1929. By 1930 she was back living in the United States in a studio in Greenwich Village. Her painting of the downtown poet Kenneth Fearing encapsulates this time – newly surrounded by Greenwich Village artists, the image of Fearing in front of a chaotic New York backdrop reflects Neel’s immersion into the fresh mood of downtown New York, as well as being a testament to her domination of figurative portraiture, as early as the 1930s

Magistrates Court (The Courtroom Scene), 1935

After the Wall Street crash of 1929, the Great Depression that followed was one of Neel’s most political periods, and she often painted from her memories of being on the frontline of protests. Signed up to the Public Works of Art Project, a relief program that encouraged artists to create work, Neel drew inspiration from her time campaigning against dire post-crash social conditions in New York, steeping each work with an empathy for her subjects. The painting Magistrates Court (The Courtroom Scene), was drawn from her own memory of a time where she was arrested following a protest.

Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis), 1970

Neel moved to Harlem in the early 1940s into a big light-filled apartment. A single mother without a job, she was aware of the struggle to make ends meet, not only for herself, but for those around her. Her paintings of friends and acquaintances during this time show a deep respect for the impossible work of surviving poverty in Harlem. Her painting Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis) is a tribute to the legacy of the sitter, a campaigner, activist and one of the founding organizers of the women’s art movement. Neel had dozens of political figures sit for her, including activist Abdul Rahman — they drew so much attention to her practice that she was investigated by the FBI in 1944.

Frank O’Hara, 1960

After embarking on psychotherapy in the late 1950s, Neel emerged more confident and resolute in her career as an artist. She was determined to take herself more seriously and to monetize her art, and this portrait of beat poet Frank O’Hara captures that newfound confidence. At the time O’Hara was a director at the Museum of Modern Art, and Neel had asked if he’d sit for her. The resulting image was published in ArtNews magazine in 1960. Shortly after publication Neel’s audience grew rapidly. Soon, she was welcoming celebrity sitters including Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga.

Linda Nochlin and Daisy, 1973

Linda Nochlin’s 1972 book Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? spoke to the exclusion of women artists throughout history, and it’s huge success brought crucial context to Neel’s work. In her painting Linda Nochlin and Daisy, Neel offers a glimpse into the private life of Nochlin, sitting with her daughter Daisy, and plays with Neel’s long-lived stubborn refusal to paint a portrait for flattery’s sake only. For Neel it was an honor to be depicted realistically. Her desire was to accurately reflect a group of people who wanted to change the way contemporary Americans were living, and her honest portraits are a testament to that notion.

Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle runs until 29 May at The Barbican Centre London.