Alice Neel
29 Oct 2010 - 28 Jan 2011
ALICE NEEL
Paintings and Drawings
Duration: 29 October 2010 – 28 January 2011
Aurel Scheibler is pleased to present his second show of worksby Alice Neel, one of the great American painters of thetwentieth century. This is only her second exhibition in Germanyto date and runs concurrently with her retrospective PaintedTruths at the Moderna Museet in Malmö.
In collaboration with Jeremy Lewison, we are once againfeaturing an extensive range of portraits. For the first time,however, we are combining these with a small selection of stilllifes and cityscapes, genres Neel is not as well known for butwhich she equally imbued with sensitive interpretations of thezeitgeist and her own condition. Together with several drawings,the show touches on nearly every phase of her artistic careerand helps to flesh out the world beyond the living room chairs onwhich her sitters alighted.
Born near Philadelphia in 1900 and trained at thePhiladelphia School of Design for Women, Alice Neel became apainter with a strong social conscience and equally strong leftwingbeliefs. In the 1930s she lived in Greenwich Village, New York and enrolled as a member of the WorksProgress Administration for which she painted urban scenes. Her portraits of the 1930s embraced left wingwriters, artists and trade unionists.
Neel left Greenwich Village for Spanish Harlem in 1938 to get away from the rarefied atmosphere of an artcolony. There she painted the Puerto Rican community, casual acquaintances, neighbours and people sheencountered on the street. In the 1960s she moved to the Upper West Side and made a determined effort toreintegrate with the art world. This led to a series of dynamic portraits of artists, curators and gallery owners,among them Frank O'Hara, Andy Warhol and the young Robert Smithson. She also maintained her practice ofpainting political personalities, including black activists and supporters of the women's movement.
In the 1970s, Neel began to paint portraits of her extended family as well as a major series of nudes. Neelexhibited widely in America throughout the 1970s and in 1974 she held a retrospective exhibition at the WhitneyMuseum of American Art, New York. She was regularly invited to lecture on her work and became a role model forsupporters of the feminist movement. She was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (nowthe American Academy of Arts and Letters), the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the USA, andreceived a number of national awards including the International Women's Year Award in 1976 and the NationalWomen's Caucus for Art Award for outstanding achievement in the visual arts in 1979. She died in 1984.Alice Neel was a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, landscape and still life, Neel was neverfashionable or in step with avant-garde movements. Sympathetic to the expressionist spirit of northern Europeand Scandinavia and to the darker arts of Spanish painting, she painted in a style and with an approachdistinctively her own.
In addition to the current retrospective in Malmö, (previous stations were the Museum of Fine Arts, Houstonand Whitechapel Gallery, London) over the last decade Alice Neel has had numerous solo shows in the UnitedStates and Europe and participated in signifcant group shows including Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution.Her work is represented in such internationally known collections the Tate Modern, London; National Gallery ofArt, Washington, DC; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
A catalogue will be available.
Paintings and Drawings
Duration: 29 October 2010 – 28 January 2011
Aurel Scheibler is pleased to present his second show of worksby Alice Neel, one of the great American painters of thetwentieth century. This is only her second exhibition in Germanyto date and runs concurrently with her retrospective PaintedTruths at the Moderna Museet in Malmö.
In collaboration with Jeremy Lewison, we are once againfeaturing an extensive range of portraits. For the first time,however, we are combining these with a small selection of stilllifes and cityscapes, genres Neel is not as well known for butwhich she equally imbued with sensitive interpretations of thezeitgeist and her own condition. Together with several drawings,the show touches on nearly every phase of her artistic careerand helps to flesh out the world beyond the living room chairs onwhich her sitters alighted.
Born near Philadelphia in 1900 and trained at thePhiladelphia School of Design for Women, Alice Neel became apainter with a strong social conscience and equally strong leftwingbeliefs. In the 1930s she lived in Greenwich Village, New York and enrolled as a member of the WorksProgress Administration for which she painted urban scenes. Her portraits of the 1930s embraced left wingwriters, artists and trade unionists.
Neel left Greenwich Village for Spanish Harlem in 1938 to get away from the rarefied atmosphere of an artcolony. There she painted the Puerto Rican community, casual acquaintances, neighbours and people sheencountered on the street. In the 1960s she moved to the Upper West Side and made a determined effort toreintegrate with the art world. This led to a series of dynamic portraits of artists, curators and gallery owners,among them Frank O'Hara, Andy Warhol and the young Robert Smithson. She also maintained her practice ofpainting political personalities, including black activists and supporters of the women's movement.
In the 1970s, Neel began to paint portraits of her extended family as well as a major series of nudes. Neelexhibited widely in America throughout the 1970s and in 1974 she held a retrospective exhibition at the WhitneyMuseum of American Art, New York. She was regularly invited to lecture on her work and became a role model forsupporters of the feminist movement. She was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (nowthe American Academy of Arts and Letters), the highest formal recognition of artistic merit in the USA, andreceived a number of national awards including the International Women's Year Award in 1976 and the NationalWomen's Caucus for Art Award for outstanding achievement in the visual arts in 1979. She died in 1984.Alice Neel was a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, landscape and still life, Neel was neverfashionable or in step with avant-garde movements. Sympathetic to the expressionist spirit of northern Europeand Scandinavia and to the darker arts of Spanish painting, she painted in a style and with an approachdistinctively her own.
In addition to the current retrospective in Malmö, (previous stations were the Museum of Fine Arts, Houstonand Whitechapel Gallery, London) over the last decade Alice Neel has had numerous solo shows in the UnitedStates and Europe and participated in signifcant group shows including Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution.Her work is represented in such internationally known collections the Tate Modern, London; National Gallery ofArt, Washington, DC; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
A catalogue will be available.