Howardena Pindell

Howardena Pindell (born April 14, 1943) is an American artist, curator and educator.

She is known as a painter and mixed media artist, her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing the intersecting issues of racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and exploitation.

She is known for the wide variety of techniques and materials used in her artwork; she has created abstract paintings, collages, "video drawings," and "process art."

Howardena Pindell was born on April 14, 1943, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised in the neighborhood of Germantown.

Her parents were Mildred (née Lewis) and Howard Douglas Pindell, she was an only child.

She graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls.

From a young age, she demonstrated promise in figurative art classes at the Philadelphia College of Art, the Fleisher Art Memorial, and the Tyler School of Art.

She received her BFA degree in 1965 from Boston University, and her MFA degree in 1967 from Yale University.

Pindell had studied color theory under Sewell Sillman.

In 1967, Pindell began working in the Arts Education Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, later moving on to a curatorial position in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books.

Following her graduation from the MFA program specializing in painting at Yale University in 1967, Pindell moved to New York City.

It was in New York City where she began to work with abstraction and collaging, finding inspiration in the work of fellow grad school student Nancy Silvia Murata.

In 1969, Pindell gained recognition for her participation in the exhibition American Drawing Biennial XXIII at the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, and by 1972, had her first major exhibition at Spelman College in Atlanta.

In the mid-1970s, she began traveling abroad as a guest speaker and lecturer.

By the 1970s, she began developing a unique style, rooted in the use of dots and reminiscent of minimalism and pointillism.

From working with dots, Pindell began making use of the scrap circles of oaktag paper that resulted from the production of her pointillist works.

The spray paintings of the early 1970s, which made use of the scrap pieces of paper from which holes had been punched, were dark and smoldering, yet there was also a shimmering light.

In 1972, Pindell co-founded the A.I.R. Gallery, which was the first artist-directed gallery for women artists in the United States.

There were twenty artist cofounders, including Nancy Spero, Agnes Denes, Barbara Zucker, Dotty Attie, Judith Bernstein, Harmony Hammond, Maude Boltz, Louise Kramer, and others.

At the first meeting, held on March 17, 1972, Pindell suggested naming the gallery the "Eyre Gallery" after the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

The artists decided to name the gallery "A.I.R. Gallery" instead, which stands for "Artists in Residence."

The gallery allowed women artists to curate their own exhibitions, allowing them the freedom to take risks with their work in ways that commercial galleries would not.

One example of this is a 17 x 90 inch, untitled drawing-collage from 1973; Pindell used over 20 thousand hand-numbered paper dots to form vertical and horizontal rows with rhythmic peacefulness, uniting order and chaos.

In 1973, her work with circles received acclaim at a show in the A.I.R. (Artists-In-Residence) Gallery in SoHo where her style had solidified into expression through "large-scale, untitled, nonrepresentational, abstract paintings".

Also in 1973, Pindell began work on her "Video Drawings" series.

At the advice of her doctor, Pindell bought a television for her studio to encourage her from working long hours on her dot works.

She became interested in the artificial light from her television monitor, and began to write out small numerals on acetate, which she stuck to the TV screen.

She then photographed her drawings placed over the monitor.

These experiments lead to a long series of works that feature her drawings over sporting events and news broadcastings, including televised elections.

David Bourdon writes, "By 1974, Pindell developed a more three-dimensional and more personal form of pointillism, wielding a paper punch to cut out multitudes of confetti-like disks, which she dispersed with varying degrees of premeditation and randomness over the surfaces of her pictures."

Her seminars included "Current American and Black American Art: A Historical Survey" at the Madras College of Arts and Crafts in India, 1975, and "Black Artists, U.S.A."

at the Academy of Art in Oslo, Norway, 1976.

By 1977, she was associate curator of MoMA's department of Prints and Illustrated Books.

She continued to spend her nights creating her own pieces, drawing inspiration from many of the exhibits hosted by MoMA, especially the museum's collection of Akan batakari tunics in the exhibit African Textiles and Decorative Arts.

While working at MoMA, Pindell created a statistical report spanning 7 years where she surveyed art institutions and galleries in New York state that were featuring representation by Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American artists and designers.

She would continue to work at MoMA for the next 12 years (until 1979) in a variety of capacities, including exhibit assistant, curatorial assistant, and associate curator.

Currently, Pindell is a professor of art at Stony Brook University, where she has taught since 1979.

Her statistical findings were published in March 1989 issue of ARTnews, and found that 54 out of 64 of the surveyed art institutions and galleries (in New York state) represented 90% or greater white artists.

She was a visiting professor in the art department at Yale University from 1995 to 1999.

She was interviewed for the film !Women Art Revolution (2010).