Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty

Spanning nearly the entire twentieth century—from women’s suffrage and the Great Depression to McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, and second-wave feminism—Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty tells the story of a woman who painted through every cultural shift and refused to conform to the dominant artistic or political trends of the moment.

Born into a traditional Victorian household, Neel came of age as women in the U.S. won the right to vote. A committed bohemian and political idealist, she was among the first artists to join the WPA’s Easel Division during the Depression, choosing to document the human condition in raw, unfiltered portraits. 

Despite enduring profound personal losses, including the death of her infant daughter, mental illness, and the forced separation from another child, Neel never compromised her artistic voice. After decades of working in obscurity, she was finally recognized with a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974.

With clarity and empathy, Hoban captures both the art and the life of Alice Neel—a woman who painted not to flatter or please, but to confront, connect, and bear witness to the world around her.