Catlett, Elizabeth

April 15, 1919

The youngest of three children, printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett was educated at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. Her father, John Catlett, taught at Tuskegee Institute and in the D.C. public schools. He died before her birth. Her mother, Mary Carson Catlett, worked as a truant officer.

Catlett graduated cum laude from Howard University School of Art in 1937, studying with James Herring, James Porter (drawing), James Wells (printmaking), and Lois Mailou Jones (design). In 1940 Catlett earned the M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa. She studied with painter Grant Wood and changed her concentration from painting to sculpture. In 1941 her thesis project, a marble sculpture titled Mother and Child, took first prize in the American Negro Exposition in Chicago.

From 1940 to 1942 Catlett was head of the Art Department at Dillard University. Among her students was Samella Sanders (Lewis), who became a lifelong friend and her biographer. In the summer of 1941 Catlett studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago. She met and married Charles White. Over six years they spent time in Chicago, where she worked at the South Side Art Center; New York, where she studied with sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1942 and 1943); and Hampton Institute, where she taught sculpture (1943). She came to believe that graphics was the appropriate medium to reach large, diverse audiences, and in 1944 she studied lithography at the Art Students' League in New York.

In 1945 Catlett received a Julius Rosenwald Foundation award to do a series on African-American women. She and White traveled to Mexico to work at the Taller de Gráfica Popular. She also studied sculpture at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura with Francisco Zúñiga and wood carving with José L. Ruiz. After a brief period in New York when she divorced, she returned to Mexico. In 1947 she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and the two had three sons, Francisco, Juan, and David. The two artists remained part of the Taller de Gráfica Popular until 1966.

In 1958 Catlett became the first woman to teach at the National University of Mexico's School of Fine Arts. From 1959 until her retirement from teaching in 1976, she served as the head of the school's sculpture department.

Catlett's work combines realism and abstract art. Much of her work deals with African-American women: the mother-and-child theme is strong and recurring. Her art reflects her concern with the needs and aspirations of common people, the poor, and the oppressed. The influence of Mexican as well as African-American culture is evident. Her sculpture, which ranges from monumental to small, is in wood, bronze, stone, terra-cotta, or marble. Works on paper are lithographs, linocuts, woodcuts, collographs, and serigraphs. Among the most well known are Sharecropper (1968) and Malcolm X Speaks for Us (1969).

Beginning in 1940 Catlett's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. It is included in over two dozen prestigious public collections and in many books, catalogs, periodicals, and film and video productions. She has received awards in several countries. Elizabeth Catlett correctly has been called a pioneer and one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. In 2003 she received the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center. She and her husband live in Cuernavaca and New York City.

See also Art in the United States, Contemporary; Hampton Institute; Painting and Sculpture

Bibliography

Lewis, Samella. The Art of Elizabeth Catlett. Claremont, Calif.: Hancraft Studios, 1984.

Lewis, Samella, and Richard Powell. Elizabeth Catlett: Works on Paper, 1944–1992. Hampton, Va.: Hampton University Museum, 1993.

Lewis, Samella, and Ruth Waddy. Black Artists on Art. Vol. 2. Los Angeles: Contemporary Crafts, 1971.

Sims, Lowery Stokes. Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpture. New York: June Kelly Gallery, n.d.

jeanne zeidler (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005