Howardena Pindell

Howardena Pindell’s meditative and entrancing work brilliantly explores the politics and social issues of her time. Over her nearly 60-year career, Pindell has challenged the staid traditions of the art world and asserted her place in its history as a woman, and one of African descent, with her richly textured abstract paintings. Since the 1960s, she has used materials such as glitter, talcum powder, and perfume to stretch the boundaries of the rigid tradition of painting. She has also infused her work with traces of her labor, obsessively rendering small, meticulous dots on her canvases. Despite the effort exerted in the creation of these works, Pindell’s use of rich colors and unconventional materials gives the finished paintings a sumptuous and ethereal quality.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Pindell studied painting at Boston University and Yale University. She worked at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for nearly 12 years, after which she began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she remains as a Distinguished Professor. She has received numerous grants and awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Joan Mitchell Grant, and a Studio Museum in Harlem Artist Award. Pindell’s work is in the permanent collections of major museums internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.