ALICE NEEL
	BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Born in Meridan Square, Pennsylvania, Alice Neel has spent more than three-quarters of a century painting the dualities of life-the apparent and the subconscious; the beautiful and the grotesque; the haves and the have nots. A graduate of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore college), her work languished in relative obscurity for more than 40 years. Yet her tenacity, single-mindedness and zest for life drove her to continue her artistic statements. She survived indifferent husbands, jealous lovers, the death of her first child and the difficulties of single motherhood-all of which Neel credits for uniting her with the force of her creative strength. Only in the 60's, did the critical acclaim Neel should have been accorded decades earlier, arrive in overwhelming proportions. In recent years, Neel became the first, living American artist to be awarded a major retrospective in the Oval Office and was commissioned to do the centennial portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Collected by major U.S. museums, she is avidly pursued for one-woman shows and major group exhibitions. In addition, she has toured most of America's leading colleges and universities and traveled as far as Africa to lecture on her art and life experiences. The language of her art is universal-whether poignant or brutal, it is always straight forward, always the truth. Alice Neel died on October 13, 1984 at her home in New York.
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