What’s On: Alice Neel

Words by Bryony Quinn, Thursday 30 June 2011

She was born in 1900 in Philadelphia. Her move to Greenwich village as a young, socially conscious artist, did not ascribe her to any “movement” in a historical sense, though her extraordinary portraits of her contemporaries (Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson etc) will testify she was certainly amongst it – that is until she moved to Spanish Harlem and depicted life with more genuine affiliation to the world. Victoria Miro has a wonderful series of 11 Men Only paintings that show Alice Neel to have been powerfully engaged with her sitters, from “the erotic to the ironic”.

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