Alice Neel was a painter known for her sensitive portraits of the artists, intellectuals, activists, and friends in her life, including such well-known figures as Andy Warhol. Born in Pennsylvania, Neel lived in Cuba for a time before settling in New York City's Spanish Harlem. Neel suffered losses in her early life that are widely seen as having informed her work, including the deaths of her child and husband, which triggered a breakdown and led to an enduring artistic preoccupation with images of motherhood and children. She worked in relative obscurity until the 1960s, when the Feminist mov … (read more)

Alice Neel was a painter known for her sensitive portraits of the artists, intellectuals, activists, and friends in her life, including such well-known figures as Andy Warhol. Born in Pennsylvania, Neel lived in Cuba for a time before settling in New York City's Spanish Harlem. Neel suffered losses in her early life that are widely seen as having informed her work, including the deaths of her child and husband, which triggered a breakdown and led to an enduring artistic preoccupation with images of motherhood and children. She worked in relative obscurity until the 1960s, when the Feminist movement promoted her as an artist-mother of sorts. Since then, Neel's work has entered major museum collections and she has been celebrated in countless exhibitions as a great American portraitist.

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