Acclaimed printer maker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett was born on April 15, 1915, in Washington, D.C. Growing up with grandparents who had been slaves, she was very aware of the injustices against black women. She attended Lucretia Mott Elementary School, Dunbar High School and then Howard University School of Art where she graduated cum laude in 1936. After she became the first student to earn an MFA degree in sculpture from the University of Iowa in 1940, she studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago and later in New York she studied lithography at the Art Students League.
In 1946, Catlett accepted an invitation to work in Mexico City’s Taller de Grafica Popular, a collective graphic arts and mural workshop. There she cultivated the theme for her work, the African American woman. In 1947, she produced her first major show “I am a Negro Woman,” a series of sculptures, prints, and paintings through a Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellowship, which toured black women’s colleges in the South. That same year she married Mexican painter Francisco Mora. A lively community of artists surrounded her and Mora, including Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. From 1958 through 1976, she directed the sculpture department at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. In 1993, Catlett received her first New York City exhibition since 1971 and in 1998 the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York honored her with a fifty year retrospective. Her paintings and sculptures are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/elizabeth-catlett-41
The societal conditions of Elizabeth Catlett's time was during the Depression. American Artist under government patronage became an integral part of the workforce and evolved socially conscious visual language. Federal art projects like the Works Progress(later Projects Administration (WPA) supported women's struggles for professional recognition. Yet despite such achievements, women of color often faced formidable political and social barrier's Elizabeth Catlett and others' were displaced from their communities of origin. (Chadwick p. 318) Known for her abstract sculpture in bronze and marble as well as prints and paintings, particularly depicting the female figure, Elizabeth Catlett is unique for distilling African American, Native American, and Mexican art in her work
A sculptor and printmaker widely considered one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century despite having lived most of her life in Mexico. Her imposing blend of art and social consciousness mirrored that of German painter Max Beckmann, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera prominent Mexican painter and other artists of the mid-20th century who used art to critique power structures. From the start of her career, Catlett "was part of a broad political milieu" that encompassed artists of many ethnicities who were committed to social justice. Catlett's decision to focus on her ethnic identity, and its association with slavery and class struggles, was bold and unconventional in the 1930s and '40s, when African Americans were expected "to assimilate themselves into a more Eurocentric ethic," art curator Lowery Stokes Sims said in a 1993 National Public Radio interview."
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/04/local/la-me-elizabeth-catlett-20120404
The historical significance of her work as well as lasting influence on contemporary artists, confident that art could foster social change, Catlett confronted the most disturbing injustices against African Americans, including lynching's and beatings. One of her best-known sculptures, "Target" (1970), was created after police shot a Black Panther; it shows a black man's head framed by a rifle sight. But she also made far more hopeful statements with lithographs and sculptures of Harriet Tubman, a slave who led others to freedom, and Sojourner Truth, a slave turned abolitionist. Catlett often returned to the enduring theme of mother and child, and her 1946 series of prints called "The Negro Woman" reflected the heroic dignity she saw in her subjects.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/04/local/la-me-elizabeth-catlett-20120404
Died at the age of ninety-six on April 4, 2012, Catlett spent most of her years in Mexico as an exile from the United States, which in 1962 tagged her an "undesirable alien" after she became a Mexican citizen. Her U.S. citizenship was eventually reinstated in 2002.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/04/artist-elizabeth-catlett-mexico-african-american.html
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