Sensei Aishitemasu | Hidden Figures: Elizabeth Catlett #BlackHERstoryMonth 18/28 @SenseiAishitemasu | Uploaded February 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
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Elizabeth Catlett (April 15, 1915 – April 2, 2012), was an American print artist and sculptor best known for her depictions of the Black American experience in the 20th century, especially the Black American woman’s experience specifically. Catlett helped to create what has been called an "Afro-femcentrist" (i.e. Black woman-centered) analytic in modern art.

Elizabeth Catlett was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Both her mother and father were the children of freed slaves, and her grandmother told her stories about the hardships of plantation life. As a child, Catlett became interested in a wood carving of a bird that her father made, sparking her love of art. After graduating from high school, she applied and was admitted into the Carnegie Institute of Technology, but they rescinded their offer of admission when the school discovered she was Black. Instead, Catlett completed her undergraduate studies in her hometown at Howard University, where she graduated cum laude in 1937. After graduation, she moved to her mother's hometown of Durham, NC to teach art, but quit after learning Black teachers were paid less than whites.

Catlett became interested in the work of artist Grant Wood, and applied to the brand-new graduate arts program of the University of Iowa where he taught. Despite being accepted to the school, she was not permitted to stay on-campus due to her race. She studied drawing, painting, and sculpture: Wood advised her to depict images of what she knew best, so Catlett began sculpting images of Black American women and children. Catlett graduated in 1940 as one of three students to earn the first masters in fine arts from the university, and the first Black American woman to receive the degree.

After graduate school in Iowa, she accepted a position at Dillard University in New Orleans and eventually worked her way up to chair of the art department. She spent her summers away in Chicago, studying ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago and lithography at the South Side Community Art Center. In 1942, she moved to New York, where Catlett taught adult education classes at the George Washington Carver School in Harlem and studied lithography at the Art Students League of New York. In 1946, Catlett received a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship to travel to Mexico and study. She accepted the grant, and in 1948, entered La Esmeralda, also known as the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking, to study wood and ceramic sculpture.

In 1947, she entered the TGP, a famous workshop in Mexico City dedicated to graphic arts promoting political causes, social issues, and education. At the TGP, she created a series of linoleum cuts featuring prominent Black American figures and ideology, including 'Sharecropper,' which is considered one of her most famous works. She remained with the TGP workshop for twenty years, leaving in 1966. Her posters of Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Malcolm X and other figures, created while she was with the TGP, were very popular and widely distributed; however, because of her activism and the radical nature of her work, Catlett came under surveillance by the United States Embassy. Eventually, she was barred from entering the United States. She renounced her American citizenship and became a Mexican citizen in 1962, continuing to work as an artist until her death at her home in Mexico in 2012.

#HiddenFigures #ElizabethCatlett

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Links:

elizabethcatlettart.com/bio

moma.org/collection/works/88189

R.I.P. Elizabeth Catlett:
ebony.com/black-history/ripelizabeth-catlett

Elizabeth Catlett - a source of inspiration and distinctive art:
washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/elizabeth-catlett-a-source-of-inspiration-and-distinctive-art/2012/04/04/gIQAofrYvS_blog.html

Artist in Focus - Elizabeth Catlett:
philamuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/artist-focus-elizabeth-catlett

University of Iowa Names Building to Honor Alumna Elizabeth Catlett:
jbhe.com/2017/08/university-of-iowa-names-building-to-honor-alumna-elizabeth-catlett