40 Facts About Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett was born and raised in Washington, DC, to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of formerly enslaved people.

Elizabeth Catlett's work is a mixture of abstract and figurative in the Modernist tradition, with influence from African and Mexican art traditions.

Elizabeth Catlett's work is heavily studied by art students who want to depict race, gender, and class issues.

Elizabeth Catlett was born and raised in Washington, DC Both of her parents were the children of formerly enslaved people; her grandmother told her stories about the capture of their people in Africa and the hardships of plantation life.

Elizabeth Catlett's parents worked in education; her mother was an attendance officer; her father taught math at Tuskegee University, then the DC public school system.

Elizabeth Catlett's father died before she was born, leaving her mother to hold several jobs to support the household.

Elizabeth Catlett was admitted into the Carnegie Institute of Technology but was refused admission when the school discovered she was black.

Tyra Butler, Stephanie and Michael Jasper, Claudette Lewis, and Yvonne Cook published and produced a catalog of Elizabeth Catlett's work, introduced by Dean Robinson, in conjunction with the exhibition.

At Howard University, Elizabeth Catlett's professors included artist Lois Mailou Jones and philosopher Alain Locke.

Elizabeth Catlett came to know artist James Herring and future art historian James A Porter.

Elizabeth Catlett's tuition was paid for by her mother's savings and scholarships that the artist earned, and she graduated with honors in 1937.

Elizabeth 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.

Wood advised her to depict images of what she knew best, so Elizabeth Catlett began sculpting images of African-American women and children.

Elizabeth Catlett graduated in 1940, one of three to earn the first Master in Fine Arts from the university, and the first African-American woman to receive the degree.

In 1942, the couple moved to New York, where Elizabeth Catlett taught adult education classes at the George Washington Carver School in Harlem.

Elizabeth Catlett studied lithography at the Art Students League of New York; she received private instruction from Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine, who urged her to add abstract elements to her figurative work.

In 1946, Elizabeth Catlett received a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship to travel with her husband to Mexico and study.

Elizabeth Catlett accepted the grant partly because American art was trending toward the abstract while she was interested in art related to social themes.

In 1947, Elizabeth Catlett entered the Taller de Grafica Popular, a workshop dedicated to prints promoting leftist social causes and education.

Elizabeth Catlett met Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Elizabeth Catlett worked with the Taller de Grafica Popular from 1946 until 1966.

However, because some of the members were Communist party members, and because of her activism regarding a railroad strike in Mexico City leading to an arrest in 1949, Elizabeth Catlett came under surveillance by the United States Embassy.

Elizabeth Catlett was unable to return home to visit her ill mother before she died.

In 1962, Elizabeth Catlett renounced her American citizenship and became a Mexican citizen.

Elizabeth Catlett was survived by her three sons, 10 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Elizabeth Catlett's 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.

Elizabeth Catlett remained with the school until her retirement in 1975.

Elizabeth 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.

Elizabeth Catlett remained with the workshop for twenty years, leaving in 1966.

Elizabeth Catlett received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1991.

Elizabeth Catlett 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.

Elizabeth Catlett's sculptures are known for being provocative, but her prints are more widely recognized, mostly because of her work with the Taller de Grafica Popular.

Elizabeth Catlett often recreated the same piece in several different media.

Elizabeth Catlett's works do not explore individual personalities, not even those of historical figures; instead, they convey abstract and generalized ideas and feelings.

Elizabeth Catlett's work revolved around social injustice, the human condition, historical figures, women, and the relationship between mother and child.

Elizabeth Catlett's thesis was the sculpture Mother and Child, which won first prize at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940.

Elizabeth Catlett's work was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement and the Chicago Black Renaissance in the 1940s and reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s with the influence of the Black Power, Black Arts Movement and feminism.

Elizabeth Catlett "gives wood and stone a melting, almost erotic luminosity".

However, Elizabeth Catlett was more concerned with the social messages of her work than with pure aesthetics.

Elizabeth Catlett acknowledged her artistic contributions as influencing younger black women.