Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012)

After graduating from Howard University and working for the FAP, printmaker, painter, and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett studied at the University of Iowa (MFA, 1940) under Grant Wood and at SAIC. Awarded first prize at the American Negro Exhibition for her sculpture Mother and Child, she then studied with Ossip Zadkine in New York. Known for her radical leftist politics, Catlett relocated to Mexico on a 1946 Rosenwald Fellowship, joined the printmaking studio Taller de Gráfica Popular and taught at the National University (1959-76).

Important Source Material:

Gedeon, Lucinda H. Elizabeth Catlett Sculpture: A Fifty-Year Retrospective. Purchase, NY: Neuberger Museum of Art, 1998.

Herzog, Melanie. Elizabeth Catlett: An American Artist in Mexico. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

Herzog, Melanie. Elizabeth Catlett: in the image of the people. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2005.

NHS