Elizabeth Catlett

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Elizabeth Catlett
Charles Wilbert White (m. 1941–1946; divorced)
Francisco Mora (painter) (m. 1947–2002; his death)
Children3, including Juan Mora Catlett
Websitewww.elizabethcatlettart.com

Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora (April 15, 1915

Black-American experience in the 20th century, which often focused on the female experience. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of formerly enslaved people. It was difficult for a black woman at this time to pursue a career as a working artist. Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship awarded to her in 1946 allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she settled and worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and became head of the sculpture department for the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she never gave up the former.[citation needed
]

Her work is a mixture of

African and Mexican art traditions. Catlett's work can be described as social realism, because of her dedication to the issues and experiences of African Americans.[5] According to the artist, the main purpose of her work is to convey social messages rather than pure aesthetics. Her work is heavily studied by art students looking to depict race, gender and class issues. During her lifetime, Catlett received many awards and recognitions, including membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, the Art Institute of Chicago Legends and Legacy Award, honorary doctorates from Pace University and Carnegie Mellon, and the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture.[citation needed
]

Early life

Catlett was born and raised in Washington, D.C.[3][6] Both of her parents were the children of freed slaves, and her grandmother told her stories about the capture of their people in Africa and the hardships of plantation life.[6][7][8] Catlett was the youngest of three children. Both of her parents worked in education; her mother was a truant officer and her father taught math at Tuskegee University, the then D.C. public school system. Her father died before she was born, leaving her mother to hold several jobs to support the household.[1][6][8]

Catlett's interest in art began early. As a child she became fascinated by a wood carving of a bird that her father made. In high school, she studied art with a descendant of Frederick Douglass, Haley Douglass.[7][9]

Education

The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. Tyra Butler, along with co-chairs Stephanie and Michael Jasper, Claudette Lewis and Yvonne Cook, published and produced a catalog of Catlett's work in conjunction with the exhibition.[11][12]

At

Alain Locke.[6] She also came to know artist James Herring and future art historian James A. Porter.[7][13] Her tuition was paid for by her mother's savings and scholarships that the artist earned, and she graduated with honors in 1937.[2][1][3][6] At the time, the idea of a career as an artist was far-fetched for a black woman, so she completed her undergraduate studies with the aim of being a teacher. After graduation, she moved to her mother's hometown of Durham, North Carolina to teach art at Hillside High School.[1][7]

Catlett became interested in the work of American painter Grant Wood, so she entered the graduate program where he taught, at the University of Iowa.[1] There, she studied drawing and painting with Wood,[14] as well as sculpture with Harry Edward Stinson.[15] Wood advised her to depict images of what she knew best, so Catlett began sculpting images of African-American women and children.[1][16] However, despite being accepted to the school, she was not permitted to stay in the dormitories; therefore, she rented a room off-campus.[15] One of her roommates was future novelist and poet Margaret Walker.[7] Catlett graduated in 1940, one of three to earn the first Masters in Fine Arts from the university, and the first African-American woman to receive the degree.[2][3][15]

After Iowa, Catlett moved to New Orleans to work at

W. E. B. Dubois, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, and Paul Robeson.[7][8]

In 1946, Catlett received a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship to travel with her husband to Mexico and study.[6] She accepted the grant in part because at the time American art was trending toward the abstract while she was interested in art related to social themes.[7] Shortly after moving to Mexico that same year, Catlett divorced White.[17] In 1947, she entered the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a workshop dedicated to prints promoting leftist social causes and education. There she met printmaker and muralist Francisco Mora, whom she married later that same year.[3][13][17] The couple had three children, all of whom developed careers in the arts: Francisco Mora Catlett in jazz music, Juan Mora Catlett in filmmaking, and David Mora Catlett in the visual arts. The last worked as his mother's assistant, performing the more labor-intensive aspects of sculpting when she was no longer able.[7][8][18] In 1948, she entered the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" to study wood sculpture with José L. Ruíz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zúñiga.[3] During this time in Mexico, she became more serious about her art and more dedicated to the work it demanded.[13] She also met Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.[8]

In 2006, Kathleen Edwards, the curator of European and American art, visited Catlett in Cuernavaca, Mexico and purchased a group of 27 prints for the University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA).[19] Catlett donated this money to the University of Iowa Foundation in order to fund the Elizabeth Catlett Mora Scholarship Fund, which supports African-American and Latino students studying printmaking.[15] Elizabeth Catlett Residence Hall on the University of Iowa campus is named in her honor.[20]

Activism

Catlett worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) from 1946 until 1966. However, because some of the members were also Communist Party members, and because of her own activism regarding a railroad strike in Mexico City leading to an arrest in 1949, Catlett came under surveillance by the United States Embassy.[1][17][21] Eventually, she was barred from entering the United States and declared an "undesirable alien". She was unable to return home to visit her ill mother before she died.[7] In 1962, she renounced her American citizenship and became a Mexican citizen.[1][3][13]

In 1971, after a letter-writing campaign to the State Department by colleagues and friends, she was issued a special permit to attend an exhibition of her work at the Studio Museum in Harlem.[1][7]

Later years

After retiring from her teaching position at the

Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Catlett moved to the city of Cuernavaca, Morelos in 1975.[1] In 1983, she and Mora purchased an apartment in Battery Park City, New York. The couple spent part of the year there together from 1983 until Mora's death in 2002.[1][8][17] Catlett regained her American citizenship in 2002.[8][13]

Catlett remained an active artist until her death.[6][21] The artist died peacefully in her sleep at her studio home in Cuernavaca on April 2, 2012, at the age of 96.[2][3] She was survived by her 3 sons, 10 grandchildren, and 6 great-grandchildren.[1]

Career

Sharecropper, 1952[22] or 1957[23]

Very early in her career, Catlett accepted a Public Works of Art Project assignment with the federal government for unemployed artists during the 1930s. However, she was fired for lack of initiative, very likely due to immaturity. The experience gave her exposure to the socially-themed work of Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias.[7]

Much of her career was spent teaching, as her original intention was to be an art teacher. After receiving her undergraduate degree, her first teaching position was in the

Picasso exhibit. As the museum was closed to black people at the time, the group went on a day it was closed to the public.[1] She eventually went on to chair the art department at Dillard.[7] Her next teaching position was with the George Washington Carver School, a community alternative school in Harlem, where she taught art and other cultural subjects to workers enrolled in night classes.[7] Her last major teaching position was with the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (now known as the Faculty of Arts and Design) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), starting in 1958, where she was the first female professor of sculpture.[1] One year later, she was appointed the head of the sculpture department despite protests that she was a woman and a foreigner.[13][17] She remained with the school until her retirement in 1975.[24]

When she moved to Mexico, Catlett's first work as an artist was with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP), a famous workshop in Mexico City dedicated to graphic arts promoting leftist political causes, social issues, and education. At the TGP, she and other artists created a series of linoleum cuts featuring prominent black figures, as well as posters, leaflets, illustrations for textbooks, and materials to promote literacy in Mexico.[25] Sharecropper, one of the linoleum cuts made at the TGP, is possibly her most famous work and is an excellent example of Catlett's bold visual style due to both the crisp black lines and rich brown and green inks of the drawing, and the halo of the hat brim and the upward looking angle of the composition making the figure monumental, or someone to be venerated, despite the poverty evidenced by the safety pin holding together the cloak.[22][23][26] Catlett's immersion into the TGP was crucial for her appreciation and comprehension of the signification of "mestizaje", a blending of Indigenous, Spanish and African antecedents in Mexico, which was a parallel reality to African-American experiences.[27] She remained with the workshop for twenty years, leaving in 1966.[28] Her posters of Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Malcolm X and other figures were widely distributed.[1]

Although she had an individual exhibition of her work in 1948 in Washington, D.C.,

Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008,[2][11] and the 2011 individual show at the Bronx Museum. The last of her exhibitions Elizabeth Catlett actually attended was in May 2009 in at University of Louisville's The Cressman Center, organized by E&S Gallery. From 1993 to 2009, her work was regularly on display at the June Kelly Gallery.[2] In July 2020, while closed to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Philadelphia Museum of Art featured Catlett's work in an online exhibit.[29]

The Legacy Museum, which opened on April 26, 2018,[30] displays and dramatizes the history of slavery and racism in America and features artwork by Catlett and others.[31] In 2023/2024, the Museum for Modern Art in Frankfurt showed the first comprehensive exhibition of Elizabeth Catlett's work.[32]

Awards and recognition

During her lifetime, Catlett received numerous awards and recognitions.

NAACP Image Award in 2009,[21] and a joint tribute after her death held by the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in 2013.[3]

Other honors include an award from the

Cleveland, honorary citizenship of New Orleans, honorary doctorates from Pace University and Carnegie Mellon, and the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture. The Taller de Gráfica Popular won an international peace prize in part because of her achievements .[8][13][11] She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1991.[34] By the end of her career, her works, especially her sculptures, sold for tens of thousands of dollars.[7]

She was the subject of an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series An Alternative History of Art, presented by Naomi Beckwith and broadcast on March 6, 2018.[35] The Philadelphia Museum of Art featured Catlett in an online exhibition.

Carnegie Mellon University, the school that denied her entrance in 1931 on the basis of her race,[36] went on to bestow her with an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree in 2016[11]

Catlett delivered the 1995–96 Annual Sojourner Truth Lecture (first established in 1983, at Pitzer College.[37]

Legacy

In 2017, Catlett's alma mater, the University of Iowa, opened a new residence hall bearing her name.[citation needed][38]

Artistry

Reclining Female Nude (1955) in the exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Catlett is recognized primarily for sculpting and

cedar, mahogany, eucalyptus, marble, limestone, onyx, bronze, and Mexican stone (cantera).[1][13] She often recreated the same piece in several different media.[18] Sculptures ranged in size and scope from small wood figures inches high to others several feet tall to monumental works for public squares and gardens. This latter category includes a 10.5-foot sculpture of Louis Armstrong in New Orleans and a 7.5-foot work depicting Sojourner Truth in Sacramento.[7]

Much of her work is realistic and highly stylized two- or three-dimensional figures,

organic abstraction to create a simplified iconography to display human emotions) of Henry Moore, Constantin Brâncuși and Ossip Zadkine to popular and easily recognized imagery. Other major influences include African and pre-Hispanic Mexican art traditions. Her works do not explore individual personalities, not even those of historical figures; instead, they convey abstracted and generalized ideas and feelings.[17] Her imagery arises from a scrupulously honest dialogue with herself on her life and perceptions, and between herself and "the other", that is, contemporary society's beliefs and practices of racism, classism and sexism.[39] Many young artists study her work as a model for themes relating to gender, race and class, but she is relatively unknown to the general public.[21]

Her work revolved around themes such as social injustice, the human condition, historical figures, women and the relationship between mother and child.[17] These themes were specifically related to the African-American experience in the 20th century with some influence from Mexican reality.[2][1][13] This focus began while she was at the University of Iowa, where she was encouraged to depict what she knew best. Her thesis was the sculpture Mother and Child (1939), which won first prize at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940.[16]

Mother and Child (1939)

Her subjects range from sensitive maternal images to confrontational symbols of

Freida Tesfagiorgis called an "Afrofemcentrist" analytic.[33]

The Taller de Gráfica Popular pushed her to adapt her work to reach the broadest possible audience, which generally meant balancing abstraction with figurative images. She stated of her time at the TGP: "I learned how you use your art for the service of people, struggling people, to whom only realism is meaningful."[1]

Critic Michasel Brenson noted the "fluid, sensual surfaces" of her sculptures, which he said "seem to welcome not just the embrace of light but also the caress of the viewer's hand". Ken Johnson said that Ms. Catlett "gives wood and stone a melting, almost erotic luminosity". But he also criticized the iconography as "generic and clichéd".[1]

However, Catlett was more concerned in the social messages of her work than in pure aesthetics. "I have always wanted my art to service my people – to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential."[1] She was a feminist and an activist before these movements took shape, pursuing a career in art despite segregation and the lack of female role models.[1][13] "I don't think art can change things," Catlett said: "I think writing can do more. But art can prepare people for change, it can be educational and persuasive in people's thinking."[7]

Catlett also acknowledged her artistic contributions as influencing younger black women. She relayed that being a black woman sculptor "before was unthinkable. ... There were very few black women sculptors – maybe five or six – and they all have very tough circumstances to overcome. You can be black, a woman, a sculptor, a print-maker, a teacher, a mother, a grandmother, and keep a house. It takes a lot of doing, but you can do it. All you have to do is decide to do it."[7]

Catlett's series The Negro Woman, dated 1946–1947, is a series of 15 linoleum cuts that highlight the experience of discrimination and racism that African-American women were facing at the time. This series also illustrated the strength and heroism of these women, including the historically prominent Harriet Tubman and Phillis Wheatley.[41]

Artist statements

No other field is closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity.

— Elizabeth Catlett, 1973[42]

"Art for me must develop from a necessity within my people. It must answer a question, or wake somebody up, or give a shove in the right direction — our liberation."[43]

Works

This is a list of select work by Catlett.

  • Students Aspire (1977), Howard University campus, 2300 6th Street NW, Washington, D.C.
  • For My People portfolio (published 1992), by
    Limited Editions Club
    , New York
  • Ralph Ellison Memorial (2002), 150th Street and Riverside Drive, Manhattan, New York[44]
  • Reclining Female Nude[45] (1955), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • Torso (1985),[46] is a carving in mahogany modeled after another of Catlett's pieces, Pensive (b. 1946)[47] a bronze sculpture. The mahogany carving is in the York College, CUNY Fine Art Collection (dimensions: 35' H x 19' W x 16' D). The exaggerated arms and breasts are prominent features of this piece. The crossed arms are broad, with simple geometric shapes and ripples to indicate a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, along with a gentle ridge along the neck. The hands are carved larger than what would be in proportion to the torso. The figure's eyes are painted with a calm, yet steady gaze that signifies confidence. Catlett evokes a strong, working-class black woman similar to her other pieces that she created to portray women's empowerment through expressive poses. Catlett favored materials such as cedar and mahogany because these materials naturally depict brown skin.

Collections

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad Rosenberg, Karen (April 3, 2012). "Elizabeth Catlett, Sculptor With Eye on Social Issues, Is Dead at 96". New York Times. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Boucher, Brian (April 3, 2012). "Elizabeth Catlett, 1915–2012". Art in America magazine. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-607-605-255-6
    .
  4. ^ "Conversation: The Life, Work and Legacy of Elizabeth Catlett, 1915-2012". PBS NewsHour. April 5, 2012. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  5. S2CID 146427495
    .
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Elizabeth Catlett 1915–2012". National Museum for Women in the Arts. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u "Elizabeth Catlett". Emerge. 11 (5): 46–51. March 2000.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h "Elizabeth Catlett". International Sculpture Center. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  9. doi:10.1515/9780822398134-007
    . Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  10. OCLC 955223324
    .
  11. ^ a b c d e "May 15: Carnegie Mellon Honors Artist Elizabeth Catlett With Special Exhibition, Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, May 17–18". Carnegie Mellon University. May 15, 2008. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  12. ^ Haynes, Monica, "Making amends: CMU lauds famed black artist 76 years after it denied her admittance", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 19, 2008.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Elizabeth Catlett". Ebony. 61 (5): 100–102, 104. March 2006.
  14. ISBN 978-0-7148-7877-5
    .
  15. ^ a b c d e f "Elizabeth Catlett". University of Iowa. Archived from the original on February 12, 2015. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  16. ^ a b Charlotte Streifer Rubenstein (1990). American Women Sculptors. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Elizabeth Catlett: The power of form". The World & I. 13 (7): 118–123. July 1998.
  18. ^ a b c "5 Things to Know About Elizabeth Catlett". Scholastic Art. 42 (4): 10. February 2012.
  19. ^ "I Am: Prints by Elizabeth Catlett".
  20. ^ "Catlett Residence Hall | Campus Maps & Tours". maps.uiowa.edu. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
  21. ^ a b c d e f Keyes, Allison (February 12, 2012). "Black, Female And An Inspirational Modern Artist". National Public Radio. Retrieved February 11, 2015.
  22. ^ a b "Sharecropper". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  23. ^
    The Art Institute of Chicago
    . Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  24. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  25. ^ "Taller de Gráfica Popular". Oxford Reference. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
  26. The Museum of Modern Art
    . Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  27. ISBN 978-1-62674-207-9.[page needed
    ]
  28. ^ "Fallece la escultora y grabadora Elizabeth Catlett: México Obituario". EFE News Service. Madrid. April 4, 2012.
  29. ^ "Philadelphia Museum of Art - Artist in Focus: Elizabeth Catlett". philamuseum.org. Retrieved July 20, 2020.
  30. ^ "Exonerated death row inmate tells his story at Legacy Museum". CBS. April 9, 2018. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  31. ^ Miller, James H. (April 16, 2018). "Alabama memorial confronts America's racist history". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  32. ^ "ELIZABETH CATLETT Exhibition 18. November 2023 — 16. June 2024". MMK.
  33. ^
    ISBN 1-55862-220-9
    .
  34. ^ "Chronicle". The New York Times. June 26, 1991.
  35. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett", Episode 2, An Alternative History of Art, BBC Radio 4, March 6, 2018.
  36. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett | Biography, Art, Artwork, Sharecropper, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. April 11, 2024. Retrieved April 15, 2024.
  37. ^ Dickson, Joseph. "Sojourner Truth Lecture Series". Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies. Retrieved August 2, 2022.
  38. ^ McKinney, Cristóbal (September 7, 2016). "UI names residence hall after Elizabeth Catlett". Iowa Now.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  39. ^ a b Kearns, Martha. Gumbo Ya Ya: Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists. New York: MidMarch Press, 1995.
  40. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". University of Washington Press. Retrieved February 21, 2024.
  41. S2CID 146427495
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  42. ^ Farris, Phoebe. Women Artists of Color: A Bio-critical Sourcebook to 20th Century Artists in the Americas. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999.
  43. ^ Scarborough, Klare, "Elizabeth Catlett: Singing the Blues", The International Review of African American Art, Vol. 25, No. 4, (2015), p. 51.
  44. ^ "Riverside Park Monuments - Ralph Ellison Memorial". NYC Parks. Archived from the original on September 7, 2014. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  45. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett, Reclining Female Nude, 1955". National Gallery of Art Collections. Retrieved March 20, 2024.
  46. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". web.york.cuny.edu. Retrieved December 19, 2017.
  47. ^ "The Friends of Kresge presents: Gifts of Art: 35 Years of Friends of Kresge Acquisitions". artmuseum.msu.edu. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  48. ^ "Head of a Woman (Woman), 1942–44". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on June 18, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  49. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". Minneapolis Institute of Art. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  50. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Archived from the original on November 3, 2016. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  51. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". National Gallery of Art. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  52. ^ "Artist Profile: Elizabeth Catlett". National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). Archived from the original on August 12, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  53. ^ "Artist in Focus: Elizabeth Catlett". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Archived from the original on July 20, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  54. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett: Artist As Activist". Reginald F. Lewis Museum. October 2, 2019. Archived from the original on October 4, 2019. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  55. ^ "March 2 Art Minute: Elizabeth Catlett, Head of a Young Woman". The Toledo Museum of Art. March 2, 2020. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  56. ^ "Elizabeth Catlett". whitney.org. Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on July 17, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.

Further reading

External links

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