1935, Alice Neel, Kenneth Fearing -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label: Neel painted several fellow communists throughout her career, including the poet Kenneth Fearing, whom she met shortly after moving to Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 1932. Fearing's writing championed the disenfranchised- a theme that Neel weaves through the numerous references to his poems surrounding his likeness, including a scene of police brutality, impoverished figures, and an injured soldier. Neel said that Fearing's "heart bled for the grief of the world," a sentiment represented here by the skeleton that appears to clutch his heart.
1935, Alice Neel, Kenneth Fearing -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (special exhibition)
From the museum label: Neel painted several fellow communists throughout her career, including the poet Kenneth Fearing, whom she met shortly after moving to Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 1932. Fearing's writing championed the disenfranchised- a theme that Neel weaves through the numerous references to his poems surrounding his likeness, including a scene of police brutality, impoverished figures, and an injured soldier. Neel said that Fearing's "heart bled for the grief of the world," a sentiment represented here by the skeleton that appears to clutch his heart.