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Alice Neel: Kinships
Cindy Nemser and Chuck, 1975, oil on canvas
An exhibition of portraits of the family by Alice Neel, one of the finest painters of her generation, is at the Norton Museum of Art February 14 through March 29, 1998. Both critics and the subjects of her paintings have written of Neel's ability to portray the dynamics of relationships. Kinships focuses on particular family relationships: siblings, domestic pairs, parents and children, and members of her own family. The exhibition was organized by the Tacoma Art Museum, and is sponsored by The Elizabeth Norton Society.
Born in 1900, Alice Neel worked as a figurative painter during the decades of WPA realism, postwar abstract expressionism, and 1970s minimalism. She persevered in her work despite a turbulent personal life that included a year of hospitalization after a nervous breakdown, the destruction in 1934 of over two hundred and fifty paintings and drawings, and little attention to her work until the 1960s. Her art demonstrates a vigorous working manner, an unsparing skill in observation and a generous tolerance for the unpredictability of human nature.
Black Spanish Family, 1950, oil on canvas
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