Howardena Pindell creates work that fuses formal abstraction, social critique, and self-reflection through the use of unconventional materials and experimental, labor-intensive techniques. She began exploring abstraction and collage in the 1970s, relying especially on materials she could access easily, particularly through her curatorial post at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Following several years of sustained investigations of applying chads to paper, Pindell pivoted to working on unstretched canvas, enmeshing the small circular pieces into dense layers of paint, powder, and other media. This exhibition concentrates on that period of Pindell’s output, featuring large-scale paintings from the mid- to late 1970s that variably recast and obliterate Minimalism’s core compositional devices, such as the grid and the monochrome. With their haptic, textured surfaces and weighty, almost bodily presence, these works exemplify her approach to art making at the time, reflecting a broad range of influences from textile designs to feminist politics while elucidating her meticulous, iterative, yet playful processes.
Howardena Pindell is curated by Jordan Carter, curator and co–department head, with Emily Markert, curatorial associate.
Howardena Pindell was born in Philadelphia in 1943. She studied at Boston University and Yale University, New Haven, before moving to New York in the 1960s. In 1967, she began working at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, first in the Department of National and International Traveling Exhibitions and eventually rising to the roles of associate curator and acting director in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books. In 1972, Pindell co-founded A.I.R. Gallery, New York, the first all-female artists’ cooperative in the United States. From 1979 to 2024, she taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, retiring after over 40 years as a distinguished professor. Pindell has exhibited extensively since the 1970s. Recently, solo exhibitions have been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); the Shed, New York (2020–21); and Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (2021–22). Pindell has received numerous awards, including a 2019 Archives of American Art Medal from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Pindell lives in New York.
Dia Beacon