The Painter Who Depicted the 'Other' America

In 1938, American painter Alice Neel decided to leave the bohemian cradle of Greenwich Village, an epicentre of the New York art world at the time, and move to the poor and unsung neighbourhood of Spanish Harlem. It was here that she found an important part of her artistic soul. For the next 50 years, until her death in 1984, she painted uptown, documenting the varied New York personalities she encountered there. Neel was aware of and active in the political shifts that…