Black Women Abstract Artists (2024)

Alma Thomas
Alma Woodsey Thomas(September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-AmericanExpressionistpainter and art educator best known for her colorful abstract paintings. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C., andThe Washington Postdescribed her as a force in theWashington Color School.Thomas remains an influence to young and old as she was a cornerstone for the Fine Arts atHoward University, started a successful art career later in her life, and took major strides during times of segregation as an African-American female artist. Thomas believed that creativity should be independent of gender or race, creating works with a focus on accidental beauty and the abstraction of color.

In 2015, her paintings,Resurrection(1966), was prominently hung in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, having been acquired for the White House collection in 2014 with $290,000 in funding from theWhite House Historical Association.It was "the first artwork by an African-American woman to hang in the public spaces of the White House and enter the permanent collection.

Shinique Smith
Shinique Smith(born January 9, 1971) is an Americanvisual artist, known for her colorfulinstallation artand paintings that incorporate found textiles andcollagematerials.She is based in Brooklyn, New York.Smith combines fine art media with text, bright colors, andfound objects, such asstuffed animalsand clothing.She began to include used clothing in her work after reading aNew York Times Magazinearticle about secondhand garments shipped to Africa from thrift stores.She describes her process as a personal one: "It all begins with emotion, an expression and I allow myself to go on a journey in the making of each work, a journey of associations between object and color, between lyrics and fabric, between the viewer and me."

Shinique Smith received aLouis Comfort Tiffany FoundationAward in 2013, The Maryland Institute College of Art's Alumni Medal of Honor in 2012, and aJoan MitchellPrize in 2008. Smith's work is included in several prestigious permanent collections, including theAckland Art Museum,Brooklyn Museum,Denver Art Museum,Los Angeles County Museum of Art,The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, thePalmer Museum of Art, The Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and theWhitney Museum of American Art. She is represented byDavid Castillo Gallery, Miami.

Mildred Thompson
Mildred Jean Thompson(March 12, 1936 – September 1, 2003) was an American artist who worked in the media of painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography. She was also a writer and, beginning in 1987, was an associate editor for the magazineArt PapersinAtlanta, Georgia. Critics have related her art toWest Africantextiles andIslamic architecture;they have also citedGerman Expressionism, music (both Americanjazzand classical European music) and Thompson's readings inastronomy,spiritualismandmetaphysicsas important artistic influences.

Thompson's work is in the permanent collections of theSmithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; theMuseum of Modern Art, New York; theBrooklyn Museum; andHoward University, Washington, DC, among others.

Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu(born in 1970) is an American contemporaryvisual artist, known for her multi-layered paintings of abstracted landscapes on a large scale. Her paintings, drawings, and prints depict the cumulative effects of urban sociopolitical changes. Mehretu is included inTime magazine 's100Most Influential People of 2020.

Mehretu's canvases incorporate elements from technical drawings of a variety of urban buildings and linear illustrations of urban efficiency, including city grids and weather charts.The pieces do not contain any formal, consistent sense of depth, instead utilizing multiple points of view and perspective ratios to construct flattened re-imaginings of city life.

Mehretu's works are held in the collections of theMinneapolis Institute of Art,Museum of Modern Art,Brooklyn Museum,Carnegie Museum of Art,Walker Art Center,Studio Museum in Harlem,and theSan Diego Museum of Art.

Howardena Pindell
Howardena Pindell(born April 4, 1943) is anAmericanpainter and mixed media artist.Her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing the intersecting issues of racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and exploitation. She is known for the wide variety of techniques and materials used in her artwork; she has created abstract paintings, collages, "video drawings," and "process art."

In 1967, Pindell began working in the Art's Education Department at theMuseum of Modern Art(MoMA) inNew York City, later moving on to a curatorial position in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books.She would continue to work at MoMA for the next 12 years (until 1979) in a variety of capacities, including exhibit assistant, curatorial assistant, and associate curator.

In 1972, Pindell co-founded theA.I.R. Gallery, which was the first artist-directed gallery for women artists in the United States.There were twenty artist cofounders, includingNancy Spero,Agnes Denes,Barbara Zucker,Dotty Attie,Judith Bernstein,Harmony Hammond, Maude Boltz,Louise Kramer, and others.The gallery allowed women artists to curate their own exhibitions, allowing them the freedom to take risks with their work in ways that commercial galleries would not.

By 1977 she was associate curator ofMoMA's department of Prints and Illustrated Books.She continued to spend her nights creating her own pieces. Currently, Pindell is a professor of art atStony Brook University, where she has taught since 1979.She was a visiting professor in the art department atYale Universityfrom 1995-1999. Pindell's art is in more than 30 museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal
Mary Lovelace O'Neal(born February 10, 1942) is an American artist and arts educator. Her work is focused on abstracted mixed-media (primarily painting and printmaking) andminimalism. She is aProfessor Emeritus,University of California, Berkeleyand retired from teaching in 2006. O'Neal's art has been exhibited widely throughout North America and internationally, with group and solo shows inItaly,France,Chile,SenegalandNigeria. She lives and works in Oakland, California, and maintains a studio in Chile.

Mary Lovelace O'Neal's paintings have progressed through different phases over her long career, beginning with loose forms and evolving to more precise patterns. O'Neal has received numerous awards and exhibited in many national and international exhibitions throughout her career.She was invited as resident artist to participate in the international arts festival inAsilah,Morocco, in 1983. O'Neal curated an exhibition for theMuseo Nacional de Bellas ArtesinSantiago, Chile, "17 Artistas Latino y Afro Americanos en USA" in 1991. Two years later, she received the Artist En France Award sponsored by the French government andMoet & Chandon. In 2005, she was selected to represent Mississippi in the Committees Exhibition at theNational Museum of Women in the Artsin Washington, D.C.

Her work is in various permanent art collections includingOakland Museum of California, National Gallery of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, theBrooklyn Museum, theSmithsonian Institutions, theBaltimore Museum of Art, theOakland Museum of California, and theNational Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile.

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