Women to Watch: 5 Artists to Look Out for in April’s Post War & Contemporary Art Auction

As we celebrate Women’s History Month and look towards our Post War & Contemporary Art auction next month, Hindman is delighted to showcase the work of five trailblazing women artists who will be reflected in the April 19th sale. From abstractionists to surrealists to textile artists, the works to be offered highlight the talents of women who have been pioneers within the industry and who have dedicated their lives to lifting up fellow women artists.

Howardena Pindell

Howardena Pindell (American, b. 1943) | Kensington Series #3, 1974 | Estimate: $30,000-50,000

With an oeuvre that confronts social and structural issues from racism to feminism, Howardena Pindell is renowned for her abstract, mixed media and video artworks.

In her roles as an artist, educator, and curator, social justice is a key thread throughout Pindell’s career. During her time as the first Black woman curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Pindell collected information from art institutions and galleries in New York state about their representation of nonwhite artists and designers. Her work extended to co-founding A.I.R., the first artist-centered gallery concentrating on providing women a non-commercial space to curate and show work. Through A.IR, she organized an exhibition titled The Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the US, reflecting on her own experience with tokenism and racism even within the feminist movement.

While her colorful dot collages reflect her fascination with the concept of regeneration, they also stem from her own early experiences with racism. Pindell recalled how the circle first stood out to her in an October 2020 New York Times article, saying that she had first “experienced [them] as a scary thing.” At a root beer stand with her father as a child, she noticed red dots stuck to the bottom of their mugs, which were markers of which glassware was appropriate for use by nonwhites in Jim Crow’s America.

The circles also reference the need for renewal after Pindell experienced physical trauma following a car accident in 1979. Much like the revitalization represented in the circles, she also had to enter the recovery process.

Pindell reclaimed the circle within her own art, and her circle collages have captured the imagination of viewers around the world at museum exhibitions and at auction.

Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowic (Polish, 1930-2017) | NANA (Red with Black), 1970-80 | Estimate: $30,000-50,000

“The godmother of installation art,” Magdalena Abakanowicz will be another great women artist in the auction. Known for her experimental and experiential sculptures, Abakanowicz created massive, womb-like three-dimensional fiber works called Abakans. NANA (Red with Black) (lot 64) is a behemoth, a true Abakan, roughhewn and laboriously stitched, and an excellent example of the type of experience the artist wished to create for viewers.

The second work by Abakanowicz, Untitled (Face) (2005) (lot 115), comes from a private collection, gifted directly from the artist during her tenure in Chicago when she was creating Agora, a celebrated installation of 106 headless and armless iron sculptures in Grant Park and the largest figurative sculpture of its time. Untitled (Face) is an amalgamation of the artist’s study of the human form, disembodied and fragile, close-mouthed, and creased with concern.

Gertrude Abercrombie

Gertrude Abercrombie (American, 1909-1977) | Birds Eggs and Dominoes with Pyramid, 1963 | Estimate: $50,000-70,000

Hindman is no stranger to offering works by “the Queen of the Bohemians,” Gertrude Abercrombie. Following the presentation of the most significant collection of works by the artist last September and a new world auction record in December, we will offer six exquisitely composed Abercrombie works this spring. The paintings capture important themes and objects for Abercrombie, such as eggs, dominos, and owls, that have become so associated with this rediscovered Surrealist.

Birds Eggs and Dominoes with Pyramid, 1963 (lot 30), is a strong display of the evolution of Abercrombie’s work. The austere landscape, which we see frequently in her paintings, is made more unique with the depiction of a pyramid, which only appears in a handful of her works. The eggs are almost a metaphor for an enclosure or home. From the composition to the colors, this seemingly simple still life fuses the everyday with the exotic, while also conveying the artist’s own fears and insecurities.

Miyoko Ito

Miyoko Ito (American, 1918-1983) | E.E. 179 (the ken), 1976 | Estimate: $50,000-70,000

Full of expressive colors and remarkable precision, Miyoko Ito’s paintings have garnered significant attention in recent years.  The Chicago artist’s work often conveys scenes of interiors, landscapes and the human body. While often vibrantly colored, her works still evoke a sense of mystery and isolation.

The delicately layered striations of sensitive hues in E.E. 179 (the ken)  (lot 65) initially present as beguiling abstraction. Deeper examination of the composition reveals structural references to architecture and landscape and a combination of interior and exterior space. The painting serves as a window into Ito’s intensely personal dream world in dusk and dawn tones. As the world auction record holder for Ito, the firm expects this to be a closely watched lot ahead of the sale.

Alice Baber

Alice Baber (American,1928-1982) | Dance of the Wind Cave, 1973 | Estimate: $30,000-50,000

“Anything you remember well you remember in very vivid color, and anything that’s particularly sort of gloomy becomes very gray,” Alice Baber said in a 1973 interview with the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Another revered abstractionist, Baber had an obsession with color that informed her work. Baber also identified as a feminist and was dedicated to amplifying the voices of women artists through the organization of numerous exhibitions.

Baber’s 1973 Dance of the Wind Cave (lot 59) is a beautifully fluid acrylic on canvas that perfectly captures her tendency to satisfy what she termed “color hunger.” She had a strong desire to use and understand color in ways that were both concrete and atmospheric throughout her work. Dance of the Wind Cave is also archetypical of those she made during the prime of her career – there is a balance of positive and negative space, with shifting forms of color that have a kaleidoscope-like quality.

View the entire April Post War & Contemporary art auction.

Featured image: Howardena Pindell (American, b. 1943) | Untitled #83, 1977 | Estimate: $40,000-60,000