Howardena Pindell

Homage to the Square

Howardena Pindell became fascinated with color theory during her graduate studies at Yale University, where she completed coursework under the tutelage of modernist painter Josef Albers. Homage to the Square references Albers’s series of the same name, where he arranged overlapping squares in varying hues to investigate the relationships between colors. In a similar fashion, Pindell developed an iconic style in the 1970s of colorful spray dot paintings, using circles as her primary geometric form. To Pindell, the circle represents a shape of infinite potential and is a critical motif she would constantly return to throughout her career. Homage to the Square is therefore not only a recognition of Albers’s legacy, but also a commemoration of the endless explorations of form and color.