Skylight Culver City, 5880 Adams Boulevard, Culver City, CA
Februrary 15 - 19, 2023
https://www.springbreakartshow.com/
Cade Tompkins Projects’ booth at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Los Angeles, features a rare oil painting by Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984) entitled “Fanya” 1930, a portrait of the author and soon-to-be Hollywood screenwriter, Fanya Foss (Ukrainian, 1906-1995). This painting has not been seen in the public for over 25 years.
Many know Alice Neel after the well-deserved and publicized traveling exhibition “People Come First” which originated at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, traveled to the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and just opened at the Barbican Centre, London, but not everyone knows Alice Neel’s portrait of Fanya Foss.
Foss was born in Odessa, Ukraine and migrated to NYC as a young child with her family and studied music at Juilliard. However, with her keen ability as a writer she became a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle and later owned a bookstore/antique shop in Greenwich Village in NYC where Neel worked as an employee of Foss. They became intellectual friends within the community of artists, writers and musicians.
In the early 1930s, Foss left New York and headed west determined to see the United States. Along the way her book, “Ask No Return”, which detailed the experiences of Greenwich Village artists during the Depression, was purchased by RKO Radio Pictures. Foss’ intellect and ability with stories parlayed into multiple movies and later television scripts in a career that spanned 32 years in Hollywood from 1940-1972. Accompanying the Neel painting are posters for movies written by Fanya Foss, including “Affectionately Yours” 1941 starring Merle Oberon, Dennis Morgan, Rita Hayworth and directed by Lloyd Bacon; and the comedies “The Stork Pays Off” 1941 and “Why Girls Leave Home” 1945.
We are pleased to exhibit Alice Neel & Fanya Foss, as a celebration of the lives and careers of these two brilliant women. Times and Ticket For Fair and information listed above.