The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh
Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York
April 10 – June 21, 2025
The Blue Dress, 1970
Oil on canvas, 66½ × 34½ inches (168.9 × 87.6 cm)
Collection of Audrey and Joseph Anastasi
© Estate of Sylvia Sleigh,
courtesy of the Estate of Sylvia Sleigh and Lévy Gorvy Dayan
Pregnant Nude, 1967
Oil on canvas, 36½ × 57¼ inches (92.7 × 145.4 cm)
Private Collection, New York, courtesy of AWG Art Advisory
© Estate of Alice Neel,
courtesy of the Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner
Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh. The exhibition, conceived by Saara Pritchard, marks the first focused presentation of Marcia Marcus (b. 1928), Alice Neel (1900–1984), and Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), who each worked in New York City and shared in its artistic circles in the dynamic decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During this period, they portrayed mutual sitters, exhibited together, and participated in public discussions. Their representations of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances are distinctive in form and style, yet share in their evocation of the human spirit, capturing Sylvia Sleigh’s reflection “The human situation adds a certain poignancy to portraits...”
In 1973, paintings by the three figurative artists were on view in the unprecedented exhibition Women Choose Women, organized by Women in the Arts and presented at the New York Cultural Center. The three painters would exhibit together again in the following years, notably in Women’s Work: American Art 1974, Philadelphia Civic Center and In Her Own Image, Samuel S. Fleischer Art Memorial, administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art (both part of Focus on Women in the Visual Arts, 1974)—as well as Sons and Others: Women Artists See Men, Queens Museum (1975). Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, and Sylvia Sleigh too were early participants in the collaborative installation The Sister Chapel, PS1, New York (1978)—from which Marcia Marcus eventually withdrew due to teaching and other exhibition commitments—with Alice Neel and Sylvia Sleigh unveiling large-scale paintings.
In their works, each artist differentiated herself from prevailing modes of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism—capturing Neel’s predecessor Robert Henri’s principle “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.” Their distinguished images depicted many of the same artistic and critical figures, including David Bourdon, Sari Dienes, Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, and John Perreault, among others, as well as self-portraits. They also each painted or collaborated with writers and curators such as Lucy Lippard, Cindy Nemser, Linda Nochlin, Barbara Rose, Marcia Tucker, and Sleigh’s husband Lawrence Alloway.
While working at different phases of maturity in their practices during the 1960s and 1970s, they experienced the period’s socio-political movements, including for civil and women’s rights. This historical environment is described by Lucy Lippard in her exhibition catalogue introduction for Women Choose Women:
“A largescale exhibition of women’s art in New York is necessary at this time for a variety of reasons: because so few women have up until now been taken seriously enough to be considered for, still less included in, museum group shows; because there are so few women in the major commercial galleries; because young women artists are lucky if they can find ten successful older women artists to whom to look as role models; because although seventy-five percent of the undergraduate art students are female, only two percent of their teachers are female. And above all—because the New York museums have been particularly discriminatory, usually under the guise of being discriminating.”
Although the three artists aligned with and participated in feminist causes to varying degrees, the energies of the movement created a focus on women’s art, resulting in exhibitions, galleries such as AIR Gallery and Soho 20 Gallery, grassroots publications, organizations including Women’s Interart Center and Women’s Caucus for Art, and panel discussions, in which they each featured. The portraits by Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, and Sylvia Sleigh gesture towards this critical art-historical moment, while illuminating for viewers each artist’s distinctive point of view.
As a testament to their legacies, the exhibition features works by contemporary figurative painters Jenna Gribbon, Karolina Jabłońska, Chantal Joffe, Nikki Maloof, Wangari Mathenge, and Claire Tabouret, who carry forward the tradition of rendering lived images of self, family, friends, and the home. Presenting recent and new canvases created on the occasion of the exhibition, the contemporary artists share in the history and atmosphere of community, and expand upon the themes of womanhood, intimate portraiture, the nude, and the still life that underlie The Human Situation.
LEVY GORVY DAYAN, NEW YORK
19 East 64th Street, New York City
Related Posts:
Marcia Marcus, Role Play: Paintings 1958-1973 @ Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, October 12 - December 2, 2017
Alice Neel: The Early Years @ David Zwirner, New York, September 9 - October 16, 2021
Alice Neel: Freedom @ David Zwirner, New York, February 26 - April 13, 2019
Alice Neel @ Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 18 - April 15, 2001
Sylvia Sleigh: Every leaf is precious @ Ortuzar, New York, February 12 – April 5, 2025
