1921
Spends the summer with her sister, Lilly,
in Pittsburgh, where she works in a bank.
November 1: Enrolls in the fine art program
at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore
College of Art and Design), although she is listed as a student
in illustration for a brief period during the 1922-23 school
year. She uses her savings to pay the first year’s
tuition but receives Senatorial (state-funded) scholarships for
the next three years, according to school records. Among her
instructors are Paula Balano who teaches drawing and anatomy
and designs stained glass; Henry Snell, who teaches landscape
painting; and Rae Sloan Bredin, her teacher for life class and
portraiture. Harriet Sartain, later described by Neel as
‘a very conventional lady’, is Dean of the school
(‘Interview with Alice Neel’ by Karl E. Fortress,
September 12 1975, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C.).
1923
Receives honorable mention, Francisca
Naiade Balano Prize, in her portrait class.
1924
Again wins honorable mention, Francisca
Naiade Balano Prize, in her portrait class.
Attends the Chester Springs summer school
of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which offers an
outdoor portrait class and landscape drawing and painting
classes.
Here she meets the Cuban artist Carlos
Enríquez (1900-1957), son of a prominent family in
Havana.
July 24: She and Enríquez leave the Chester
Springs program. Neel later reports: ‘When they expelled
him for doing not much more than taking walks with me in the
evening, I left also’ (Patricia Hills, Alice Neel, New York: Harry
N. Abrams, 1983, p. 17).
October 15: Enríquez, back in Havana,
writes in a letter to Neel in Colwyn: ‘How wonderful
would it be if you were a lost princess in the woods and of
course as the legend always says, I riding a horse will find
you crying ... “Weep no more my fair lady,”
I’ll say ... for I have a kingdom in my heart for
you.’
1925
Neel wins the Kern Dodge Prize for best
painting in life class at the Philadelphia School of Design for
Women.
Spring: Graduates from the Philadelphia
School of Design for Women.
June 1: Marries Enríquez in Colwyn,
Pennsylvania, but anxieties prevent her from traveling to
Havana with him.
Enríquez eventually leaves for Havana,
where he takes a job with the Independent Coal Company and
participates in his first exhibition, the Salón de Bellas Artes 1925, with Eduardo Abela, Victor Manuel, Marcelo Pogolotti,
and Amelia Peláez. This group of young artists, along
with Enríquez, will be among the leaders of the Cuban vanguardia movement.
1926
Enríquez returns to Colwyn in February to
convince Neel to join him in Cuba. She travels with him to
Havana and they stop in Palm Beach and Key West. They meet up
with Enríquez’s friend Marcelo Pogolotti in Palm
Beach, where they sketch the resort and are photographed for a
newsreel, according to an unidentified newspaper article
(courtesy Juan Martinez):
Helping to spread the fame of Palm Beach, a
trio of artists, Miss Alice Neel of Philadelphia, Don Carlos
Enríquez and Marcelo Pogoloti of Havana, Cuba, are daily
sketching many of the show places of the famous winter resort.
Señor Enríquez is a staff artist for
a Havana magazine while Señor Pogoloti is sketching
scenes to be incorporated in a book showing various scenes
around the world in a tour he is making.
The trio are clever craftsmen, transferring
their thoughts to the sketch pad with fountain pens. Each
stroke of the pen must be correct because there is no chance
for erasures.
Friday the trio was photographed for a
motion picture news reel. Their presence on the Lake Trail drew
much attention and a great deal of curiosity.
In Cuba, the couple lives with
Enríquez’s parents in their house in El Vedado, later
moving into their own apartment on the waterfront and then to a
rented house in the neighborhood of La Víbora.
Neel’s parents visit in the later
summer, according to the memoirs of Marcelo Pogolotti (Del barro y las voces,
Havana, 1982, p. 227):
The hurricane of ’26 has passed into
history as one of the most devastating that Havana has
suffered. Carlos Enríquez’s in-laws, who had just
come the day before from the United States, after hearing the
strange and haunting sounds of cement ornaments that fell to
the ground, and the snapping of tree branches, asked,
‘Does it always rain this way here?’ (translated from Spanish).
Neel has her first solo exhibition, in
Havana, according to her later remarks (dates and location
unconfirmed).
December 26: Gives birth to a daughter,
Santillana del Mar Enríquez.
1927
March-April: Exhibits with Enríquez in the XII Salón de Bellas Artes, which is reviewed by Martí Casanovas in
the Pequena Gaceta (date unknown):
There is an evident parallelism of tendency
and an almost simultaneous advance in the work of this
extraordinary couple ... Alice Neel and Carlos Enríquez
set the tone of the Salon, and we could almost say the Salon
has been made for them.
Perhaps, thanks to their contributions, it
is saved from a total and thundering condemnation. A revelation
of this caliber every year would be enough not to accuse it of
being sterile and utterly useless (translated
from Spanish).
April: Two paintings by Neel from 1926-27, Retrato
(‘Portrait’) and Enríquez, are reproduced in Revista
de Avance (April 15), a new
publication for which Enríquez becomes a regular illustrator.
In the April 30 issue these paintings as well as two of her
untitled drawings are illustrated.
May 7-31: Exhibits with Enríquez in Exposicion de Arte Nuevo, a show sponsored by Revista
de Avance. Two of Enríquez’s
nudes are removed from the exhibition for being ‘too
exaggerated.’ (Later can add: repro of Alice’s
painting of Carlos and Carlos’ painting of Alice)
May: Neel returns to Colwyn, Pennsylvania,
with Santillana.
Fall: Enríquez arrives in Colwyn.
The family moves to an apartment on West 81st Street in New
York City. Neel finds a job at a Greenwich Village bookstore
run by Fanya Foss whom she will paint in a formal portrait, Fanya and in the
satirical watercolor The
Intellectual.
Meets Nadya Olyanova, a graphologist, who
will become one of her closest friends and a frequent subject
in her work of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It is possible
that she met Nadya on the recommendation of Pogolotti who
attended the Art Students League with Olyanova in 1923.
Winter: Neel moves with Enríquez and their
daughter to 1725 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx.
December: Santillana dies of diphtheria and
is buried on December 9 in the Neel family plot at Arlington
cemetery in Pennsylvania.
1928
While pregnant with her second child, Neel
works at the National City Bank in New York. Enríquez continues
to contribute illustrations to Revista
de Avance in Havana.
November 24: Gives birth to Isabella
Lillian Enríquez (called Isabetta) in New York City.
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Neel and her sister Lilly c.1921
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Neel and Enríquez at Chester Springs 1924
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Enríquez in Cuba c.1924
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Enríquez, Neel and Marcelo Pogolotti,
c.1926
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Neel holding her daughter, Santillana
c.1927
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Neel and Fanya Foss c,1927
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Enríquez and Isabetta 1928
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Neel and Isabetta 1928
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Photograph of Neel titled Alice Enríquez 1929
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