Alice Neel Book order (chronological)

Dynamic and forward thinking this unconventional retrospective monograph takes its cues from Alice Neel’s life and work— at once intimate, powerful, and bursting with color. Alice Neel was one of the great American painters of the twentieth century and a pioneer among women artists. A painter of people, landscape and still life, Neel was never fashionable or in step with avant-garde movements. “One of the reasons I painted was to catch life as it goes by,” she explained, “right hot off the griddle.” This beautifully designed volume takes a unique approach to the exhibition catalog, highlighting Neel’s understanding of the fundamentally political nature of how we look at others, and what it means to feel seen. Long a favorite of portrait lovers, Neel has recently gained an even wider 21st-century audience appreciative of the searing candor with which she viewed the world, the depth of her humanity, and her championing of the underdog. This beautifully produced catalog features a thoroughly modern design, as well as an essay by renowned critic Hilton Als and poetry by Daisy Lafarge.

Alice Neel (1900–1984) is widely considered one of the greatest portraitists of the twentieth century. Published on the occasion of a solo exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, this beautifully designed book presents a selection of portraits and still lifes from the last two decades of the artist’s life. Called “the pre-eminent painter-chronicler of New York bohemia” by Deborah Solomon of The New York Times , Neel remains a hero to many of today’s most influential figurative painters, including Eric Fischl, Elizabeth Peyton and Marlene Dumas--as much for the emotional and psychological intensity of her work as for her exemplary fearlessness.