Collage of Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, and Betye Saar. Collage by Doriana Diaz.

By Karla Méndez

Writer Karla Méndez examines the history of Black feminist art, as viewed through the work of its prominent artists.

At the Intersection of Race and Gender

Until the 1960s, there hadn’t been any comprehensive art movements that focused solely on celebrating and promoting women artists. As the United States reckoned with movements and demonstrations like the anti-war movement and the Civil Rights movement, women also began (or better yet, continued) to advocate for equality. Out of this anger and sorrow grew the second-wave feminist movement. There are many aspects of the second-wave feminist that are exclusive instead of inclusive and Black women artists rejected the reality that White, Black, and Women of Color are similarly oppressed based on preconceived notions regarding gender. Moreover, they claimed and reclaimed their intersectional identities, politics, and experiences as centralized to their artistry, feminist praxis, and the fight for liberation.

“I became a feminist because I wanted to help my daughters, other women and myself aspire to something more than a place behind a good man. In the 1970’s, being black and a feminist was equivalent to being a traitor to the cause of black people. “You seek to divide us,” I was told. “Women’s Lib is for white women. The black woman is too strong now—she’s already liberated.”

— Faith Ringgold, An excerpt from We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold by Faith Ringgold published by Duke University Press 2005. pg. 175-180.

**Elizabeth Catlett** (April 15, 1915 April 2, 2012) was a Black American sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the 20th century, which often focused on the Black women’s experience. Photo: Elizabeth Catlett, 1948. Source: HuffPost.

Beyond ‘The Dinner Party’

While many instinctively refer to artists like Judy Chicago and her 1974-1979 piece The Dinner Party or Miriam Schapiro’s 1967 piece, Big XO, when discussing feminist art, many Black women artists were creating work during this period. Although the mainstream feminist art movement centered on women’s experiences, it was often told through a White lens, which excludes the experience of being a Black woman in the United States. It ignores what Black American women encounter existing at the intersection of a racial and gender identity that has historically been oppressed.

In response to mainstream feminist art’s disregard for centralizing Black women’s artistic productions, Black feminist artists and gender-expansive individuals formed their own movements and organizations. Black feminist art addressed not just the racism Black American women faced daily but also the sexism they experienced from White men and within Black men in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. By ignoring the voices of Black women, feminist circles were writing history as if Black artists – specifically Black women artists – were not making, producing, and embodying their art and artistic praxes.

In 1977, the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist, lesbian, and socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts from 1974 to 1980, publicly condemned The Heresies Collective, a group of predominantly White feminists-artists in New York City in 1976, when they published their third annual art journal, Lesbian Art and Artists, when they failed to include any lesbians of color in the journal.

Clementine Hunter (c. December 1886 or January 1887 – January 1, 1988) was a self-taught Black folk artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana. Photograph by Judith Sedwick as part of the Black Women Oral History Project. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Wikipedia.

A Space to Hold Our Stories

During this time, there were not many established art spaces where Black feminist artists could show their work or converge to discuss race, gender, or class issues. Even within groups of Black artists, Black women artists were often subjected to treatment not extended to male artists. For example, postmodern Black American painter and printmaker, Emma Amos (1937 - 2020), was the youngest member of the artist group, Spiral – “a New York–based collective of African-American artists that came together in the 1960s to discuss their relationship to the civil rights movement and the shifting landscape of American art, culture and politics.” Amos was only asked to join after the members inspected her work, while the male members were not required to have such inspection. On the walls of the galleries of New York City, often cited as the world’s cultural capital, the featured artists were White male artists.

To rectify this, in 1974, Linda Goode Bryant, the director of education at Studio Museum Harlem, opened Just Above Midtown (JAM) gallery. Unlike the neighboring galleries, JAM attracted and specialized in art by Black artists like Howardena Pindell and Senga Nengudi. It was a space where Black artists could gather, experiment freely, and be amongst fellow artists who could relate to their experiences. Although the gallery was not successful at churning out sales, it was still a place where Black artists could show their work and find support, which was rare in other art spaces. Notably, at JAM, the artists were not pressured to create art in a single medium or focus on work that was “sellable.” As writer Alex Greenberger at ARTnews notes about the mission and vision of JAM: “…there was no one way for Black artists to work.”

As Black artists continued to navigate a predominately White and racist art world, many Black feminist artists created work that challenged stereotypes and societal expectations, working across mediums like performance art, acrylic painting, and collage. The list of Black feminist artists is long, and this is by no means comprehensive. Still, the following artists left an indelible impact on Black art, particularly Black feminist art.

Howardena Pindell

While Howardena Pindell’s work is central to the larger feminist art movement, her artistry focuses on racism, sexism, violence, and slavery as paramount to Black feminist art. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1943, Pindell received her BFA from Boston University in 1965 and went on to receive her MFA from Yale University in 1967. After graduating from Yale, she made her way to New York City, where she began working at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), first in the Arts Education Department as an exhibition assistant and eventually promoted to assistant curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books.

Despite being a highly educated and talented artist, Pindell faced difficulty getting her work into galleries and acquiring representation. Because of her race, many of the galleries in New York City refused to show her work. Additionally, mirroring Emma Amos’ experience with Spiral, in 1969, Pindell brought a cartload of her work to the Studio Museum, a space intended to feature the work of Black American artists, and was rejected by its director, Edward S. Scriggs. These experiences exemplify Black women artists’ exclusion due to race and gender.

Pindell was an integral part of the group of women who founded the non-profit gallery, A.I.R. (Artists in Residence, Inc.), in New York in 1972. When trying to decide on a name for the new gallery, she suggested ‘EYRE’ Gallery, in honor of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which then later became A.I.R. It is the first women’s cooperative gallery in New York to focus exclusively on centering and promoting the work of women artists. As Pindell integrated into the art scene in New York City, she began to experiment more with her art and she was inspired to stop using stretched canvas by fellow members of A.I.R. and after a visit to Africa.

Pindell explained in an interview with Mira Schor that feminism influenced her to let go of some of her formal artistic training and to utilize materials not typically associated with art, like perfumes, sequins, and glitter. Her involvement with feminist art also made her switch from rectangular canvases to circles and ovals, further conveying the freedom with which feminist artists conducted their work. Although being in a woman-centered space did inspire her, she was the only Black woman. Because of that, her experience as a Black woman was seen as “political” and was often ignored or overlooked in favor of “women” issues. In the same interview Pindell explained that occurrences like these and tokenism within the mainstream feminist movement motivated her to disengage from White feminists.

For Pindell and other feminists of color, it was understood that the larger feminist art movement was not for them and did not consider them in their advocacy. In her autobiographical art piece, Free, White, and 21 (1980), Pindell spoke of the racism she had endured as a Black woman in America. In the film, she freely opines about the women’s movement and the art world, both of which she was a member of but which did not fully accept her, which is something the other Black feminist artists created during this period could relate to.

Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold is another artist who embodies the Black feminist art movement and whose impact continues to reverberate through art spaces. Born in 1930 in New York City, she was encouraged by her mother to be an artist, as she knew from an early age that she wanted to create. When she decided to pursue art as a degree, she sought to enroll at the City College of New York (CCNY). Ringgold’s initial attempts to enroll were unsuccessful, as CCNY placed limitations on the degrees women could obtain. Refusing to give up, she compromised and enrolled in art with a minor in education. As a student, she faced a barrage of racism from instructors, some of who tried to discourage her from continuing, but ever obstinate, she remained, going on to graduate with her master’s in 1959. The racism and sexism she experienced solely from wanting to receive an education likely influenced her later work and only made her more determined to use her art to fight against the systems that marginalized and oppressed her.

Ringgold’s original medium of choice was oil painting. Through these paintings, she shared her political messages condemning the exclusion of women and people of color from institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in 1968 to 1970. She and several other women artists, including Poppy Johnson and Brenda Miller, held a sit-in at the Whitney in 1970, protesting their annual exhibit, which had historically been overwhelmingly male. They demanded that these exhibits consist of work by at least 50 percent of women artists and that half of the women be Black. In addition to the sit-in, they also used methods like staged artist demonstrations and placing tampons and uncooked eggs in the galleries and staircases of the museum. While they failed in having the exhibit consist of 50 percent women and 25 percent artists of color, the 1970 Sculpture Annual at the Whitney did feature 20 women artists out of 100.

In the 1980s, Ringgold began to step away from oil painting and began to make story quilts. Her move to fabric was intentional for various reasons, including that by creating quilts, she didn’t have to ask her husband for help transporting heavy canvases. Quilts also made it easier for Ringgold to publish her story on her terms and in a way that felt honest. She was inspired by using quilts as an art form during the period of enslavement. Story quilts provided enslaved Black women a safe space to gather, socialize, and bond. It helped them gain a sense of accomplishment and identity, which was particularly vital in the oppressive environment they were involuntarily forced to remain in. Much like the artists that created art before her, Ringgold utilized quilting to continue developing her identity and sharing the stories about herself and her community in a society that was not wholly invested in Black women.

Betye Saar

Like Pindell, Betye Saar’s attempts to receive a higher education were jeopardized because of racism and sexism, as women of color during this period were often encouraged to pursue a design career. Born in 1926 in Los Angeles, California, Saar received a bachelor’s degree in design from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949. It was not until her graduate studies that she took a printmaking course that motivated her to change her career path from design to art. Her work initially consisted of color etchings, ink drawings, and intaglio drawings, but over time she began to incorporate found objects like photographs and window frames.

Saar’s work is largely inspired by the spiritual practices and history of her ancestors to examine themes like race, gender, religion, and femininity. Her work utilizes items she has salvaged from antique shops, swap meets, and even garbage bins, which recall generations of her family. In doing this, Saar is paying homage to the Black women that came before her and refusing to allow their history to go unnoticed and forgotten.

Her most political piece, and what is also considered her most celebrated and well-known piece, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), was and continues to be a commentary on the plight of Black Americans in the U.S. Following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Saar, like others, found herself furious and funneled that anger into art. As writer Alexxa Gotthardt noted in Artsy, Saar took a figure and caricature, the ‘mammy,’ that has long been seen as derogatory and reworked it to be a warrior, a symbol of strength. While the piece is meant to symbolize the repression of all Black Americans, it’s difficult not to acknowledge its explicit representation of Black American women. The Liberation of Aunt Jemima is such a striking analysis of the racial, gender, and socioeconomic constructs that repress Black American women that radical Black feminist, scholar, and activist, Angela Davis has credited it with igniting the Black women’s movement.

Like Pindell and Ringgold, Saar was associated with the mainstream feminist movement, helping found the LA art collective, Womanspace, in 1973. With the collective, she organized a show in 1974 that featured Black American women artists and was meant to promote their work. Although Black Americans came out to support the artists, White women did not attend, further evidence of the racial divide within the feminist movement and the lack of support White women proffered to Black American women.

As Recording Artistspodcast host Helen Molesworth explains in an interview about Saar, for many women artists, especially Black American women artists during this time, the word ‘artist’ felt like it didn’t apply to them, like the very definition of it went against the expectation society had for them. They were expected to remain in the personal sphere, caring for the home and the children. For Black American women artists, this is further compounded by the stereotypes that are consistently forced upon them, like the angry Black woman. These stereotypes that Black American women continue to contend with only aid mainstream feminism’s claim that they politicize everything as it devalues the message of their work.

Unlike other Black women artists involved with the feminist art movement during this time, Saar resists labeling her work as feminist art, but that doesn’t mean her work was any less impactful in advancing the rhetoric of the movement. Even today, she keeps herself and her work at a distance from the label, emphasizing that feminism, as it’s been marketed, has focused on issues of equality, like getting women into the workforce. Still, within Black American communities, women always worked. This echoes the disregard that mainstream feminism has for the unique experience of Black American women and why there was and continues to be a need for a Black feminist movement.

The Revolution Continues

Although many years have passed since the Black feminist art movement began and was at its peak, the canon remains relatively the same. While there is still a lack of consideration for the experience of Black American women within the feminist movement and art spaces, there is currently a shift to bring the work of these artists to the forefront. Over the last few years, many curators like Rujeko Hockley, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, and Andrea Guinta at institutions like the Brooklyn Museum and Hammer Museum have orchestrated exhibitions that commemorate the work and impact of Black women and women of color in the arts.

Curators, art historians, and artists are ensuring to tenderly and thoughtfully pull the histories and work of these artists and give them the respect they deserve. Throughout history, the voices of Black American women have continuously been silenced, a practice that endures to this day. Saying that the need for these exhibitions and the representation of Black American women artists is timely is cliché. Still, in a society that still ignores the contributions and experiences of Black American women, it is evident that the work that started decades ago continues today.

About the Author

Karla Méndez is an arts and culture writer whose work examines the histories of Black and Latin American women and their representations within visual art, literature, poetry, and performance. She is interested in how women put forth representations of themselves that are accurately representative of their expansiveness and how they use these avenues to engage with topics of identity, gender, race, and the female body. Ultimately, her work seeks to explore and reinstate forgotten and ignored histories as a site of care for ourselves and our communities.

She is the lead columnist of Black Feminist Histories and Social Movements, a column for the advocacy organization Black Women Radicals. She is a contributor for the Boston Art Review and Elephant Magazine and her work has appeared in the Brown Art Review and Ampersand: An American Studies Journal.

Something is Missing From the Walls: Examining the Radical History of Black Feminist Art

Howardena Pindell

Faith Ringgold

Betye Saar