Renée Radell

Renée Radell (August 9, 1929 - January 21, 2023) was an American Figurative Expressionist painter whose work focused on themes portraying children and families, social commentary subjects, and politics

Early life Radell was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Because of the Great Depression, Radell moved with her family to Detroit, Michigan while still a child. She was a student at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, now College for Creative Studies.

Career

Teaching Radell was an Artist in Residence at Mercy College of Detroit from 1973 until 1983. Radell's paintings have sold at auction in New York at Christie's and Sotheby's.

Critical notices Early in her career, Radell won regional watercolor painting awards and received press reviews for gallery exhibitions in the Detroit area. and her work is included in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her visual statements about society, and politics evoked reference to Jack Levine and Ben Shahn.

In the February 24, 1974 Detroit Sunday News Magazine, Russell Kirk, author and biographer of T.S. Eliot, wrote a pictorial essay published in the Detroit News Sunday News Magazine about Radell, in which Kirk draws parallels between Eliot's "permanent things" and symbols in many of Radell's paintings. The article was republished in the University Bookman in 2007.