Alice Neel: I Am a Collector of Soul

Thomas Ammann presents the first exhibition of Alice Neel (1900-1984) in Switzerland. In collaboration with the Estate of Alice Neel we selected fourteen paintings which cover all periods of the artist’s career, each one of them significant and representative of their time.

Alice Neel was born 1900 in Philadelphia and was trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. Partly influenced by the thoughts of Robert Henri – a former teacher at her school – who had written them in his book The Art Spirit, Neel set about painting scenes from life, and “told the truth the best I was able.” After the end of her marriage with the Cuban painter Carlos Enríquez, Neel became a single mother keeping herself and her children above water with grants by the government-sponsored WPA. Early on Neel had left-wing beliefs and also a strong social consciousness, which had a bearing on her idiosyncratic choice of sitters. In each of her neighborhoods, Greenwich Village, Spanish Harlem and Upper West Side, she painted neighbours, family members, casual acquaintances, and interesting people she came across. She was an independent spirit who did not paint on commission, and paid no attention to the fashions of art, as she was devoted to realist depiction in an era of increasing abstraction.
Although her work was highly regarded in bohemian New York, success came late. Her solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1974, The Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia, 1975, and her inclusion in the groundbreaking exhibition Women Artists: 1550-1950 at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, 1977, marked a breakthrough. In Europe her paintings and drawings were – until recently – little known.