Publisher's Synopsis
Drawing was a fundamental, stand-alone component of Alice Neel's practice, persistently pursued alongside painting, for which she is primarily known. As a medium, it enabled her to capture the immediacy of her visual experience - whether in front of her sitters or on the city streets - while also affording her a greater sense of experimentation and informality. Neel chose the subjects for both her paintings and drawings from her family, friends, and a broad variety of fellow New Yorkers: writers, poets, artists, students, textile salesmen, cabaret singers, and homeless bohemians. As Claire Messud notes in her reflections on the artist in the exhibition catalogue, the complex emotions Neel evokes in her art are nothing less than the contradictions of life itself.
