ticketsMember | Make a donation

Kenneth Fearing

Alice Neel American
Sitter Kenneth Fearing American
1935
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
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.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Kenneth Fearing
  • Artist: Alice Neel (American, Merion Square, Pennsylvania 1900–1984 New York)
  • Sitter: Kenneth Fearing (American, Illinois 1902–1961 New York)
  • Date: 1935
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 30 1/8 × 26 in. (76.5 × 66 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Hartley S. Neel and Richard Neel, 1988
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints