Image: Alice Neel, Faith Ringgold, 1977
Oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches , 121.9 x 91.4 cm
© The Estate of Alice Neel
Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London, and Victoria Miro, London
Completed in 1977, Neel's portrait of the artist Faith Ringgold is one of a number of portraits of prominent art world subjects painted while Neel lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It features in Tate Modern's major exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (12 July - 22 October 2017), curated by Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, which looks at what it meant to be a Black artist in the USA during the Civil Rights movement and at the birth of Black Power.
The show opens in 1963 at the height of the Civil Rights movement and its dreams of integration. In its wake emerged more militant calls for Black Power: a rallying cry for African American pride, autonomy and solidarity, drawing inspiration from newly independent African nations.
July 10 2017
