Oil on masonite by Alice Neel signed lower right Neel 66 61x46 cm Provenance: (Private Collection and available upon request.) She was taught at the Philadelphia School of Drawing for Women. Shortly after finishing her studies, she married the Cuban painter Carlos Enríquez in 1925, the son of wealthy parents. She moved to Havana the following year, where she embraced the Cuban vanguard, although she later returned to the United States. She had a daughter, Santillana, who died of diphtheria shortly before his first birthday. The trauma of her daughter's death influenced her paintings, setting a precedent for the themes of motherhood, loss, and anxiety that permeated her work for the rest of her career.She had another daughter, Elisabetta, born in 1928, who the father took with him to Cuba in the spring of 1930, leaving the painter in the United States. Alice Neel suffered a nervous breakdown. After a short period of hospitalization, Neel made a suicide attempt. She was admitted to the Philadelphia General Hospital, from where she left in 1931 and returned to her parents' house, later going to New York.There she painted local characters.Her work glorified subversion and sexuality, depicting whimsical scenes of lovers and nudes. In late 1933, she was hired by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which gave her a modest salary. In 1939 her first child, Richard, was born to José Santiago, a Puerto Rican night-club singer whom she met in 1935. Neel moved to Spanish Harlem. She began to paint his neighbors, particularly women and children. Santiago abandoned her in 1940.Neel's second child was born in 1941, the father being communist intellectual Sam Brody. In this decade, Neel did illustrations for the communist publication, Masses & Mainstream, and continued to paint portraits. Neel appeared in a film in 1959, when director Robert Frank asked her to appear opposite a young Allen Ginsberg in his classic Beatnik film, Pull My Daisy.After practically disappearing from galleries during the 1950s and much of the 1960s, interest in Neel's work intensified at the end of this decade, making her a feminist icon. In 1970 Time Magazine commissioned Neel to paint a portrait of feminist activist Kate Millett for its cover. Millet refused to pose for the portrait and had to paint it based on a photograph.By the mid-1970s Neel gained notoriety and recognition as a major American artist.

Very good condition Provenance available upon request. Private Collection.