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Neel at Centre Pompidou Paris

An icon of militant feminism and a precursor of an intersectional approach, Neel often painted women – nudes who were a far cry from the traditional paradigm shaped by the male view and devoid of any sentimentality. The exhibition was divided into two parts structured freely around the notions of class and gender struggle. In total, some 75 paintings and drawings were on display. Visit their website.

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In March, the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated Neel’s art... This month, David Zwirner gallery will present a collection of the artist’s early works, including streetscapes and portraits, at its West 20th Street space in New York City. Continued and growing interest in Neel’s paintings could be viewed as inevitable — her focus on those who lived on society’s margins speaks directly to our cultural moment.

Rennie McDougall
New York Times, September 10, 2021

Apollo Winner

Apollo Magazine: Exhibition of the Year
Alice Neel: People Come First
The Met, New York 2021
In around 100 paintings, drawings and watercolours the largest retrospective of Neel’s work in New York – and the first in 20 years – argued for her as one of the great American painters of the 20th century. The artist’s urgent, sympathetic portraits of her fellow New Yorkers felt particularly welcome in 2021, and this show awarded them with the status they have long deserved.

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There’s a profound spiritual component to the work; her intense and casual surfaces feel like a wall that she wants her subjects’ souls to walk through to meet ours. At times, her focus, her desire to understand who her subjects are and, by extension, who you might be, can have you rushing out of the galleries for a breath of air.

Hilton Als
The New Yorker, April 19, 2021

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Experiencing Neel’s work at the Met — after a full year of loss and social upheaval — her gigantic vision, perseverance, and the tragedies of her life tell us that we could be heroes like her and the people she painted. It’s easy to recognize her greatness in retrospect, when her work is celebrated in a setting like this. For most of Neel’s 84 years, though, she was artistically on her own. “I broke all the rules,” she said.

Jerry Saltz
The Vulture, April 6, 2021

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A large retrospective feels at home in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s grandest galleries and should silence any doubt about the artist’s originality or her importance... The latest evidence is the gloriously relentless retrospective of Alice Neel (1900-1984), the radical realist painter of all things human, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Roberta Smith
The New York Times, April 1, 2021

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Days after seeing “People Come First’’ ... an afterimage of her brisk vision of vibrant humanity still pulses behind my eyes. Even in memory, Neel's paintings never sit still. They squirm, shiver and jiggle. Particularly memorable is her astonishing sequence of tender yet frank, unidealized portraits of pregnant women, women in childbirth and women breastfeeding. Regarded cumulatively, they are one of the signal achievements of modern American art.

Sebastian Smee
The Washington Post, March 25, 2021

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