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Lot Essay
Alice Neel’s portraits are among the most powerful and reflective examples of the genre. This 1983 painting depicts the Baltimore gallery owner Constantine Grimaldis, whom Neel met at an art lecture in 1980. This inauspicious meeting led to a lasting friendship between the two that continued until her death in 1984, the result of which was two exhibitions at the subject’s gallery plus this striking portrait. Sitting in a chair with his legs crossed, the figure of Grimaldis is depicted with Neel’s signature bold and expressionistic brushstrokes. Her detailed rendering of the sitter’s head reveals the concentration on Grimaldis’s face, shown in the pools of light and dark flesh-toned pinks that portray the light falling across his distinctive features. Bright pops of color, in the red tie and the blue pants, lift the colorful composition to a Matisse-like level of chromatic vibrancy.
Constantine Grimaldis founded his eponymous gallery in 1977 and in the intervening forty years it has established a reputation as being a cornerstone of Baltimore’s art community, and as playing a central role in the development of many of the city’s esteemed collections. The gallery has become known for supporting young, regional artists (including the Abstract Expressionist painter Grace Hartigan) in addition to organizing exhibitions by established artists. Grimaldis first met Neel in 1980 at a lecture the artist gave at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He had long admired the artist’s work and after the lecture approached her to suggest holding an exhibition at his gallery. She readily agreed and the pair organized their first exhibition in 1981. It was after this show that Neel first suggested painting the dealer’s portrait, but the process didn’t begin until after a second exhibition was held in 1983. Following this show, Grimaldis visited Neel’s apartment in Harlem on three consecutive afternoons where he sat for the artist, a couple of hours at a time. What most stuck Grimaldis about Neel’s process was the silence and concentration that enveloped her as she was painting. Ordinarily, Grimaldis says, Neel was a very convivial and talkative person but when she was painting she was completely silent. Grimaldis recalls that Neel began the canvas by painting the head; at one point, he asked to see what she had done; reluctantly she agreed and a delighted sitter declared “that’s exactly how I think of myself!”
One of the foremost figure painters of the post-war period, Alice Neel was persistent and determined in the pursuit of her unique form of painting when it was widely deemed to be the most unfashionable of genres. The originality and quiet power of her work ultimately came to be recognized in the wake of her first retrospective at the Whitney; since then her reputation has grown to the point where she has gained a unique and iconic status in the history of American painting. Neel's paintings grew out of the Social Realist concerns of American Art of the 1920s and 1930s, during which time she formed her highly personal brand of figuration. Her paintings often incorporated a strict, self-imposed formula yet working within these confines, Neel created a surprisingly wide range of works, all of which—whatever their subject matter—possess an expressive paint quality that, in the case of this work, results in an intensely probing painting.
Constantine Grimaldis founded his eponymous gallery in 1977 and in the intervening forty years it has established a reputation as being a cornerstone of Baltimore’s art community, and as playing a central role in the development of many of the city’s esteemed collections. The gallery has become known for supporting young, regional artists (including the Abstract Expressionist painter Grace Hartigan) in addition to organizing exhibitions by established artists. Grimaldis first met Neel in 1980 at a lecture the artist gave at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He had long admired the artist’s work and after the lecture approached her to suggest holding an exhibition at his gallery. She readily agreed and the pair organized their first exhibition in 1981. It was after this show that Neel first suggested painting the dealer’s portrait, but the process didn’t begin until after a second exhibition was held in 1983. Following this show, Grimaldis visited Neel’s apartment in Harlem on three consecutive afternoons where he sat for the artist, a couple of hours at a time. What most stuck Grimaldis about Neel’s process was the silence and concentration that enveloped her as she was painting. Ordinarily, Grimaldis says, Neel was a very convivial and talkative person but when she was painting she was completely silent. Grimaldis recalls that Neel began the canvas by painting the head; at one point, he asked to see what she had done; reluctantly she agreed and a delighted sitter declared “that’s exactly how I think of myself!”
One of the foremost figure painters of the post-war period, Alice Neel was persistent and determined in the pursuit of her unique form of painting when it was widely deemed to be the most unfashionable of genres. The originality and quiet power of her work ultimately came to be recognized in the wake of her first retrospective at the Whitney; since then her reputation has grown to the point where she has gained a unique and iconic status in the history of American painting. Neel's paintings grew out of the Social Realist concerns of American Art of the 1920s and 1930s, during which time she formed her highly personal brand of figuration. Her paintings often incorporated a strict, self-imposed formula yet working within these confines, Neel created a surprisingly wide range of works, all of which—whatever their subject matter—possess an expressive paint quality that, in the case of this work, results in an intensely probing painting.