Alice Neel is a painter known for her portraits and nudes. Neel was born in 1900 in the Main Line and studied at the Philadelphia School for Design for Women, later Moore College of Art. Neel's work is featured in an exhibit at the Philadelphia College of Art, [later University of the Arts] focusing on women artists whose work appears in the archives of the Women's Interart Center in New York. She discusses her life and career as a woman artist.
The artist says the success of her work rests on her attention to the natural, undirected poses of her subjects. She argues that, to garner artistic merit, a portrait must go beyond straightforward representation.