Howardena Pindell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Howardena Pindell
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Pindell in 2019
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| Born | April 14, 1943 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
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| Alma mater | Boston University, Yale School of Art and Architecture |
| Occupation | Artist, curator, educator |
| Known for | Painting, collage, video art, mixed media |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1987) |
Howardena Pindell (born April 14, 1943) is an American artist, curator, critic, and teacher. She is famous for her paintings and mixed media art. Mixed media means using many different materials and techniques.
Pindell started her art career working at the New York Museum of Modern Art. She also made her own art at night. She helped start the A.I.R. Gallery. This gallery supported women artists, especially Black women. Her art often explores texture, color, and how art is made. It also often talks about important issues. These include racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and unfair treatment. She has created abstract paintings, collages, and video art. Her work has been shown all over the world.
Early Life and Education
Howardena Pindell was born on April 14, 1943. She grew up in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was an only child. Her parents were Mildred and Howard Douglas Pindell.
She went to the Philadelphia High School for Girls. From a young age, she showed great talent in art classes. She studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and the Tyler School of Art.
Pindell earned her first art degree (BFA) in 1965 from Boston University. She then got her master's degree (MFA) in 1967 from Yale University. At Yale, she learned about color theory from Sewell Sillman.
Art Career Journey
Working at MoMA
In 1967, Pindell started working at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. She worked in the Arts Education Department. In 1969, her art was shown in a big exhibition. It was called American Drawing Biennial XXIII.
By 1972, she had her first major art show at Spelman College in Atlanta. In 1977, she became a curator at MoMA. She worked in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books. As a curator, she helped choose and organize art for shows.
Pindell would create her own art at night. She got ideas from the exhibits at MoMA. For example, she was inspired by African textiles. She left MoMA in 1979.
Starting A.I.R. Gallery
In 1972, Pindell helped create the A.I.R. Gallery. This was the first gallery in the U.S. run by women artists. There were twenty co-founders, including Nancy Spero and Agnes Denes. Pindell was the only Black woman among them.
She suggested naming it "Eyre Gallery" after the book Jane Eyre. But they chose "A.I.R. Gallery," which stands for "Artists in Residence." This gallery let women artists plan their own shows. This meant they could try new things with their art. This was different from regular art galleries.
However, Pindell noticed that the gallery did not include many Black artists. She felt her colleagues did not care about this issue. Her experiences at A.I.R. influenced her video art piece Free, White, and 21. She left the gallery in 1975.
Teaching and Traveling
In the mid-1970s, Pindell traveled a lot. She gave talks and lectures in other countries. She spoke about American and Black American art in India in 1975. She also spoke in Norway in 1976.
Since 1979, Pindell has been an art professor at Stony Brook University. In the 1980s, she had an unpleasant experience there. She found her office door covered in black paint. She reported it, but no action was taken. She also taught at Yale University from 1995 to 1999.
In 2010, Pindell was interviewed for a film. It was called !Women Art Revolution. In 2024, one of her paintings from 1975 sold for $1.75 million. This happened at Art Basel Paris.
Artistic Style and Themes
After finishing her art degree at Yale University in 1967, Pindell moved to New York City. There, she started working with abstraction and collaging. Abstraction means art that doesn't show real objects. Collaging means gluing different materials onto a surface.
By the 1970s, she developed her own unique style. She often used dots, like in minimalism and pointillism. Pointillism is an art style using tiny dots of color. Pindell started using the small paper circles left over from punching holes.
An art critic wrote that Pindell used a paper punch to make many confetti-like disks. She then spread them on her pictures. For example, in a 1973 drawing-collage, she used over 20,000 hand-numbered paper dots. These dots formed neat rows, mixing order and chaos.
In 1973, Pindell also began her "Video Drawings" series. Her doctor suggested she get a TV for her studio. This was to help her take breaks from her dot work. She became interested in the light from the TV screen. She would write small numbers on clear plastic sheets. Then she would stick them to the TV screen. She would photograph her drawings placed over news or sports shows.
Her early 1970s spray paintings used the leftover paper pieces with holes. These paintings were dark but also shimmered with light. Pindell later added glitter to her canvases. This made them rich with color and light.
Pindell was also influenced by the Black Power and feminist movements. She learned about new art forms while working at MoMA and traveling. She loved African sculptures. She started adding objects to her collages, like paper, glitter, and dye. This was similar to how African art uses beads, horns, and shells.
By the 1980s, Pindell also worked on unstretched canvas. Some large works looked white from far away. But up close, they were made of tiny colored paper dots, sequins, and paint. Pindell said this was like hiding her own identity to fit into the art world. However, some critics wanted her art to be more openly political.
Around this time, she combined her video drawings and hole-punched works. She added numbers to each hole punch and arranged them in neat rows.
Art After an Accident
In 1979, Pindell was in a serious car accident. She suffered severe memory loss. After this, her art became more about her own life. This helped her heal. Her painting Autobiography was part of a series about her recovery. For this piece, she traced her own body. Then she cut and sewed the outline onto a large canvas.
She also started using postcards in her collages. She would cut them into strips and paint between them. This created a vibrant, broken look. Using postcards helped her remember things after her accident.
In 1980, she made a video called Free, White, and 21. In it, she played a white woman wearing a blonde wig. She talked about racist experiences she had faced. She then focused on racism in the art world. She wrote many articles about it.
In 1980, she organized an art show at A.I.R. Gallery. It was called The Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the US. She realized she was often chosen for shows just because she was Black. So, she co-founded a group called "Entitled: Black Women Artists." This group grew internationally. Pindell traveled a lot, creating art and speaking about racism in the art community.
Throughout the 1980s, her art explored her many identities. Her family background includes African, European, Seminole, Central American, and Afro-Caribbean roots. She is also ethnically Jewish and was raised Christian. Her art also became more political. It addressed women's issues, racism, and slavery. Some critics missed her earlier, less political work.
In the 1990s, Pindell created memorial works. She also made "word" paintings. In these, a silhouette of her body had words like "slave trade" on it. This was similar to an earlier work about South Africa. That piece had a cut canvas stitched back together with the word "INTERROGATION" on it.
In the late 1940s or early 1950s, Pindell got an idea for her circular artworks. She saw a root beer bottle in Ohio. The bottom of the mug had a big red circle. This mark was once put on dishes used to serve people of color in the South.
Awards and Recognition
Pindell has received many awards for her art:
- Guggenheim Fellowship in painting (1987)
- Most Distinguished Body of Work or Performance Award from the College Art Association (1990)
- Studio Museum of Harlem Artist Award
- Distinguished Contribution to the Profession Award from the Women's Caucus for Art (1996)
- Two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships
- A United States Artists fellowship (2020)
She also has honorary doctorates from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Parsons The New School for Design.
Art in Collections
Howardena Pindell's art can be found in many museums and collections, including:
- Brooklyn Museum, New York
- Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
- Museum of Modern Art, New York City
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
- Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
- The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
- Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
See Also
In Spanish: Howardena Pindell para niños
