Nov 10, 2015 11:00 EST
Post-War & Contemporary Art
149
Alice Neel
Alice Neel
American, 1900-1984
Untitled (Portrait of Sarah Elizabeth Hewitt, Niece of Lida Moser), 1966
Signed Neel and dated '66 (ll)
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches (91.44 x 60.96 cm)
Provenance:
Lida Moser, New York (a photojournalist who worked for Vogue, Look and many other publications. A portrait of Moser by Neel is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The sitter was Moser's niece.)
Alice Neel was one of the greatest portrait painters of the 20th Century. Born near Philadelphia in 1900, Neel attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Chester Springs Summer School of the Pennsylvania Academy in 1924, where she met the Cuban artist Carlos Enriquez, whom she married the following year. Neel's fist solo exhibition took place in Havana in 1926.
The thirties were tumultuous years for the artist, who suffered a nervous breakdown and an attempted suicide. She moved to Greenwich Village with a new partner, who later burned many of her drawings and slashed her paintings. Neel became involved with the Federal Arts Project of the WPA and the left-leaning American Artist's Congress, founded by Stuart Davis and Moses Soyer, among other artists, and moved to Spanish Harlem in the late 1930s with the nightclub singer Jose Santiago Negron.
Frequently described as a Realist, the artist exclaimed "I don't do realism. I do a combination of realism and expressionism. It's never just realism." [Patricia Hills, Alice Neel, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1983, p. 90]. Hills (cited above, p. 108), calls the artist the "heir of the European expressionist painters who saw modern man distorted by unnameable demons."
Neel proclaimed "Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom," (Hills, op.cit., p.183), which could be considered the artist's motto.
Sold for $287,500
Estimated at $150,000 - $300,000
Includes Buyer's Premium
Alice Neel
American, 1900-1984
Untitled (Portrait of Sarah Elizabeth Hewitt, Niece of Lida Moser), 1966
Signed Neel and dated '66 (ll)
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches (91.44 x 60.96 cm)
Provenance:
Lida Moser, New York (a photojournalist who worked for Vogue, Look and many other publications. A portrait of Moser by Neel is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The sitter was Moser's niece.)
Alice Neel was one of the greatest portrait painters of the 20th Century. Born near Philadelphia in 1900, Neel attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Chester Springs Summer School of the Pennsylvania Academy in 1924, where she met the Cuban artist Carlos Enriquez, whom she married the following year. Neel's fist solo exhibition took place in Havana in 1926.
The thirties were tumultuous years for the artist, who suffered a nervous breakdown and an attempted suicide. She moved to Greenwich Village with a new partner, who later burned many of her drawings and slashed her paintings. Neel became involved with the Federal Arts Project of the WPA and the left-leaning American Artist's Congress, founded by Stuart Davis and Moses Soyer, among other artists, and moved to Spanish Harlem in the late 1930s with the nightclub singer Jose Santiago Negron.
Frequently described as a Realist, the artist exclaimed "I don't do realism. I do a combination of realism and expressionism. It's never just realism." [Patricia Hills, Alice Neel, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1983, p. 90]. Hills (cited above, p. 108), calls the artist the "heir of the European expressionist painters who saw modern man distorted by unnameable demons."
Neel proclaimed "Art is two things: a search for a road and a search for freedom," (Hills, op.cit., p.183), which could be considered the artist's motto.
A 2 1/2 x 1/4 inch scratch at upper right.
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Auction: Post-War & Contemporary Art, Nov 10, 2015
