Alice Neel: People Come First Metropolitan Museum of Art Exhibition

via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alice Neel: People Come First is the first museum retrospective in New York of American artist Alice Neel (1900–1984) in twenty years. This ambitious survey positions Neel as one of the century’s most radical painters. A champion of social justice whose longstanding commitment to humanist principles inspired her life as well as her art. As demonstrated in the approximately one hundred paintings, drawings, and watercolors that will appear in The Met’s survey.

Images of activists demonstrating against fascism and racism appear alongside paintings of impoverished victims of the Great Depression. As well as portraits of Neel’s neighbors in Spanish Harlem, leaders from a wide range of political organizations, queer artists and performers, and members of New York’s global diaspora. The exhibition also highlights Neel’s erotic watercolors and pastels from the 1930s. Specifically, her depictions of mothers, and her paintings of nude figures (some of them visibly pregnant). All of whose candor and irreverence are without precedent in the history of Western art.

Alice Neel was a longtime resident of New York, and the city served as her most faithful subject. Indeed, the sum total of her work testifies to the drama of its streets, the quotidian beauty of its buildings, and, most importantly, the diversity, resilience, and passion of its residents. “For me, people come first,” Neel declared in 1950. “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.”

Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

The exhibit runs now through August 1st. Admission is FREE with purchase of a museum ticket. See a preview of the exhibit here and the virtual launch video here.

See other events here!