1950
April: ‘Relief Cut by Alice
Neel’ is published in Masses
and Mainstream.
December 26-January 13, 1951: Has her first
solo exhibition in six years, showing seventeen paintings at
the A.C.A. Gallery. Joseph Solman writes in the brochure:
Alice Neel is primarily a painter of
people. Waifs and poets, friends and Puerto Rican neighbors
come in to sit for her - and she probes one without sermon or
sentimentality. At times, an element of foreboding, akin to
that in the work of Munch, creeps into her work; and there are
portraits that are almost vivisections. But always her
communication is so irresistibly direct that a great intensity
infuses her work.
Mike Gold, a prominent left-wing journalist
and Neel’s close friend, reviews the show in the Daily Worker (December
27), where he quotes her: ‘There isn’t much good
portrait painting being done today, and I think it is because
with all this war, commercialism and fascism, human beings have
been steadily marked down in value, despised, rejected and
degraded.’ The New York Times writes (December 31):
Emotional values predominate in Alice
Neel’s paintings of people at the ACA Gallery. Her
approach is frankly expressionistic; she uses a great deal of
black, accentuating profile lines, and catches figures in
strongly individual poses. And its dramatic intensity succeeds
because of unmistakable artistic sincerity.
1951
January: Illustrates Phillip
Bonosky’s story ‘I Live on the Bowery’ in Masses and Mainstream.
April 23-May 23: Exhibits twenty-four
paintings in a solo show at the New Playwrights Theatre, New
York. The exhibition, organized by Mike Gold, is a tribute to
Neel by fellow artists. Gold states in the brochure for the
exhibition: ‘Alice Neel is a pioneer of socialist-realism
in American painting. For this reason, the New Playwrights
Theatre, dedicated to the same cause, presents her paintings to
its audiences, who will know how to understand, appreciate and
encourage one of their own.’
1953
March: Neel’s mother comes to live
with her in Spanish Harlem.
March 27: Delivers a slide lecture about
her work at Jefferson School of Social Science in New York,
showing two hundred slides of her paintings. Mike Gold
introduces her, and Joseph Solman provides her critical
commentary.
Fall: Richard Neel enters High Mowing
School in Wilton, New Hampshire, which he attends on a full
scholarship until his graduation in 1957. High Mowing is
affiliated with the Rudolf Steiner School.
1954
March 1: Neel’s mother dies at the
age of eighty-six from complications brought on by a broken
hip.
August 30-September 11: Exhibits eighteen
paintings in Two One-Man Exhibitions:
Capt. Hugh N. Mulzac, Alice Neel, at
the A.C.A. Gallery. This is Neel’s last show until 1960.
1955
Fall: Hartley Neel enters High Mowing
School, which he will attend on a full scholarship until his
graduation in 1959.
October 11 and 17: Neel is interviewed by
FBI agents, whose files show that she has been under
investigation as early as 1951 owing to her periodic
involvement with the Communist party. The files describe her as
a ‘romantic Bohemian type Communist.’ According to
her sons, Neel asked the agents to sit for portraits. They
declined.
1957
Spring: Richard Neel graduates from High
Mowing School. In the fall he enters Columbia College, New
York, on a full scholarship.
1958
June: ‘Four Drawings by Alice
Neel’ is published in Mainstream (formerly Masses and
Mainstream).
Brody, who, for many years, has lived on
and off with Neel and her two boys, moves out of Neel’s
apartment permanently, but will remain a friend until her
death.
Neel begins counseling sessions with Dr.
Anthony Sterrett.
1959
Appears along with Gregory Corso, Mary
Frank, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouak, and Peter Orlovsky in
Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Beat file Pull My Daisy, which
is funded by Walter Gutman’s G-String Productions.
Spring: Hartley Neel graduates from High
Mowing School and in the fall begins Columbia College on a full
scholarship.
Neel buys a larger house in Spring Lake,
New Jersey.
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Neel’s mother c.1953
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Neel, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso on
the set of Pull My Daisy, 1959 (courtesy Deborah Bell, New York)
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Neel painting on the lawn of her second
house in Spring Lake, N.J. c.1959
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