Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) was one of the most prolific and important expressionist artists of the 20th century. Her work was political from its inception and balanced aesthetics with new and daring art styles.
Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) was one of the most prolific and important expressionist artists of the 20th century. Her work was political from its inception and balanced aesthetics with new and daring art styles.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. This is Womanica.
This month, we’re talking about visionaries.
Today, we’re talking about one of the most prolific and important expressionist artists of the 20th century. Her work was political from its inception and balanced aesthetics with new and daring art styles. She dedicated her art to representing those who inspired her, and those who rarely saw themselves represented in mainstream art. Please welcome Elizabeth Catlett.
Elizabeth was born in Washington, DC, on April 15, 1915. She was the youngest of three children born to John and Mary Catlett, both public school teachers-- though her father died a few months before her birth.
Growing up, Elizabeth was surrounded by the narratives of Black women in her family, including her mother and her grandmothers, both of whom were formerly enslaved people. She knew she wanted to be an artist from a young age. But at the time, there were few female practicing artists, and even fewer who were African-American..
After graduating from high school in 1931, Elizabeth enrolled at Howard University. There, she found a community of Black artists that inspired her to take up many forms of art, including printmaking and painting. She graduated cum laude in 1935. And five years later, became the first student to receive a master’s of fine arts in sculpting from the University of Iowa.
There, she took the advice of her mentor, Grant Wood. He told students to “Do something that you know a lot about.” Elizabeth realized her answer laid with the stories she heard growing up from her mother and grandmothers. Her work would revolve around women, Black people, and working people throughout her career.
For the next two years, Elizabeth taught art at Dillard University in New Orleans. She held an unshakeable dedication to her students. One time, she was determined for them to visit a Picasso exhibit at a museum located in City Park, an area that was restricted for white residents until 1958. So, she bused her students to the museum entrance on a day the museum would be closed to the white public.
During this time, Elizabeth became part of a politically active artistic community producing work for social change. It would affect the scope of her work for the length of her career.
In 1942, Elizabeth and husband, artist Charles White, moved to New York. There, they found an active community of African American artists, musicians, and intellectuals. Elizabeth encountered many new ideas that affected her work, including cubist-derived abstraction… but most importantly, she worked as a director and teacher at the George Washington Carver People’s School, a night school for working folks in Harlem. She spoke often with her students, and was inspired by them to pursue a fellowship to produce a series of prints, paintings, and sculptures centering Black women.
During the second year of the fellowship, Elizabeth moved to Mexico to pursue an interest in the mural and graphic art movement produced in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. She returned to the US to end her marriage to Charles, and then established permanent residency in Mexico.
There, she worked as a guest artist at the internationally recognized Taller de Gráfica Popular. There, she produced “The Black Woman,” the best-known component of her fellowship project: a series of 15 linocuts acknowledging the harsh reality, fears, struggles, and achievements of Black women’s labor through renderings of both historical heroines and ordinary African-American women.
Though ELizabeth had made a life for herself in Mexico, it didn’t come without its trouble. Following World War II, the US government escalated its attacks on progressive artists, intellectuals, and activists. Due to her activism both in the US and in Mexico, Elizabeth was among those targeted, and she was deemed an “undesirable alien.”
At the Taller, she fell in love with a fellow artist named Francisco Mora. They married in 1947, had three children, and remained together until Mora’s death. Through her immersion in Mexican life, Elizabeth became increasingly aware of the commonalities among African American and Mexican peoples’ histories and experiences, which she reflected in her work. She was especially drawn to African and pre-Hispanic Mexican sources in her art. She also enjoyed modernist abstraction, which she noted had roots in African sculpture.
In 1959, she became the first woman sculpture professor at the National University of Mexico. She became a Mexican citizen in 1962, and was denied entry to the US until 1971, when, after a letter writing campaign, she was granted a visa to attend the opening of her solo show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. From Mexico, she proclaimed solidarity with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, especially the role of women, via her art.
Elizabeth retired from teaching in 1975, but she continued to create art that called for justice for oppressed peoples. Her work, especially her sculptures, reflected the determination, resiliency, and passion of her subjects, as well as the depth and nuance of her career as an artist.
Elizabeth died on April 2nd, 2012, at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was 96 years old.
All month, we’re honoring incredible, artistic visionaries.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!