NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For many African-American artists looking for gallery representation in the 1980s, George N’Namdi was the only game in town. One of the few black art dealers, then and now, N’Namdi opened his first gallery in Detroit in 1981 and focused on black artists working in abstraction. They had been largely ignored by the mainstream art world and marginalized, as well, within black communities that expected their artists to make socially and politically oriented work.

“We were basically considered traitors if we didn’t do specifically didactic work,” said Howardena Pindell, 77, a graduate of Yale University, who took her pioneering abstractions to the Studio Museum in the Harlem borough of New York City only to be told, she said, by the director in the 1970s to “go show your work with the white boys.” They weren’t knocking on her door, either.

N’Namdi offered opportunity. Pindell had eight solo exhibitions at his galleries in Michigan, Illinois and New York from 1987 to 2006. But by 2009, she had hired a lawyer to request the return of original works lent to the N’Namdi galleries for exhibition, with a long trail of correspondence over the next decade seeking information on the whereabouts and sales of her art. She now is claiming that N’Namdi, his son Jumaane and their related companies cheated her and profited off her vulnerability.

In a lawsuit touching on issues of race, loyalty and a lack of transparency in the art world, Pindell is seeking the return of 20 works of art from the N’Namdis, along with three works from a Texas-based collector, Arthur Primas, and punitive damages of “no less than” $500,000.

The lawsuit, filed in January in the Southern District of New York and amended April 21, alleges that “accounts of sales and inventory, if provided at all, were willfully misleading and inaccurate, payments were not timely if received at all, and the identity of purchasers, as required by law, was not provided.” The three works sold to Primas, according to the lawsuit, were “heavily discounted by the N’Namdi Defendants without the knowledge or authorization” of Pindell.

George and Jumaane N’Namdi said through their lawyer, Peter Raymond, “It is our intention to move to dismiss the claims.” Raymond repeated a statement published in ARTnews, which first reported the suit: “Our clients have great respect for Ms. Pindell as an artist and are proud to have been able to help her with her career.” However, he added, “they believe the claims in this lawsuit are meritless.”

Pindell is one of a growing number of black artists, including Jack Whitten, Al Loving, Ed Clark, Robert Colescott and Frank Bowling, who have lately seen a surge of attention from museums, collectors and critics after decades of neglect. They all exhibited early on with George N’Namdi. The complaint by Pindell intends to establish a long pattern of manipulation by the N’Namdis. In a case that could strengthen protections for artists, it alleges that Loving, Herbert Gentry and their estates also “publicly expressed their difficulties” with their galleries.

Pindell’s lawsuit asserts that similar complaints were made against the N’Namdi organization by Loving’s widow, Mara, after the artist’s death in 2005. (Loving settled her lawsuit in 2008.) Gentry died in 2003; his widow, Mary Anne Rose, declined to comment on the estate’s relationship with the N’Namdis.

Last week, two African-American artists who were represented by the N’Namdis in the past, James Little and Richard Mayhew, stepped forward to tell The New York Times about their own issues with the gallery.

Mayhew, who is 96, and the last living artist from the Spiral Group, a New York-based African-American artist collective formed during the civil rights struggle, described being approached by collectors who said they owned paintings by him. “And I had no idea,” he said, adding he was “shocked” to learn that the N’Namdi galleries had sold these works without his knowledge. “I wasn’t being paid for the paintings that were sold.”

“I wanted to sue,” Mayhew said, allowing that he could not afford to do so. “Many artists were reluctant to sue or didn’t know how to do it,” he added.

Mayhew finally severed his relationship with the gallery a decade ago.

According to Pindell’s complaint, “Discrimination in the art world prevented the recognition that these artists deserved until the last several years.” It alleges that “the N’Namdis took advantage of this situation by egregiously and systematically breaching their fiduciary obligations to [the plaintiff] and others.”

Pindell, Al Loving and other artists working with the N’Namdis did not have formal contracts, not unusual at the time; business in the art world was often done on a handshake. But Pindell’s lawyer, Barbara Hoffman, said in an interview that statutes in many states protect consigned works of art and “impose obligations on the dealer, including prompt payment, even if there is not a written contract.”

Pindell, whose work ranges from highly experimental mixed-media abstractions to figurative canvases dealing with autobiographical and political themes, was celebrated in a traveling retrospective that opened in 2018 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. She has been represented since 2014 by Garth Greenan in New York, and she now shows with Victoria Miro in London as well. The artist’s work today sells for up to $1 million, according to Greenan.

Several of the works she is trying to get back in the lawsuit have “increased in value tremendously,” Hoffman said.

Declining to comment specifically on the lawsuit, Pindell said she preferred to have her dealer, Greenan, speak for her.

“Howardena would say it’s particularly depressing because George N’Namdi was taking advantage of his own people, already in precarious positions,” Greenan said. “Justice would make her feel like she wasn’t taken for a ride for 20 years.”