Howardena Pindell (January 1961), Groundbreaking, Multidisciplinary Artist and Distinguished Daughter

Her work will be on exhibit at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL for just a few more days, May 20th. However, her art works are in the permanent collections of major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art,and the Brooklyn Museum in NY; the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in PA; the National Gallery of Art in Washington; and many others.

Trained as a painter, 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. She is an internationally
recognized painter, university level educator, and museum official.  Since the 1960s, she has used materials such as glitter, talcum powder, and perfume to stretch the boundaries of the rigid tradition of rectangular, canvas painting. She has also infused her work with traces of her labor, such as obsessively affixing dots of pigment and circles made with an ordinary hole-punch. Despite the effort exerted in the creation of these paintings, Pindell’s use of rich colors and unconventional materials gives the finished works a sumptuous and ethereal quality.

Read about her in the Mid-Winter Newsletter.