A self-proclaimed “collector of souls,” Alice Neel (1900–84) is known for her bold, candid portraits. Despite the art world’s infatuation with abstraction in the 1940s and 50s, Neel refused to adjust her painting style, persisting instead in painting raw images of real people. Whether depicting curbside Madonnas with their infants, her art world contemporaries, friends, neighbors, or family, Neel sustained an interest in women throughout her career, reflecting the varied roles that women, including herself, embodied and performed. Selecting her subjects based on outward attributes that revealed inner selves, these images remain unfailingly, and often disconcertingly, honest. Alice Neel’s Women, a collection of approximately 80 paintings and drawings, examines these portraits as a central facet of Neel’s oeuvre that chronicles the evolution of American social mores as well as Neel’s personal and artistic growth.

Alice Neel's Women is sponsored by
Altria Group.