Mimi
View Similar Items
Elizabeth CatlettMimi2007
2007
About the Item
- Creator:Elizabeth Catlett (1915 - 2012, American)
- Creation Year:2007
- Dimensions:Height: 15 in (38.1 cm)Width: 16 in (40.64 cm)
- More Editions & Sizes:Edition of 90
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:South Bend, IN
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU60732037831
Elizabeth Catlett
Promoting social change was Elizabeth Catlett’s prime motivation as an artist. The granddaughter of enslaved people, Catlett was born in Washington, D.C., in 1915 and spent her adult life driven to create sculptures, prints and paintings that would reach, celebrate and uplift those who were barely visible in art.
“I have always wanted my art to service Black people — to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential,” Catlett said of her work in the 1978 book Art: African American. She studied art history, drawing and other disciplines at Howard University, and as an MFA student at the University of Iowa, her mentor, the painter Grant Wood, advised her to “take as her subject what she knew best.” As she later told an interviewer, “The thing that I knew the most about was Black women, because I am one, and I lived with them all my life, so that’s what I started working with.”
The centerpiece of Catlett’s spring 1940 thesis project, Negro Mother and Child — a figure of a Black mother embracing her child, carved from Indiana limestone — was awarded first place for sculpture at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago held that year.
Catlett taught art at Dillard University in New Orleans — where she battled discrimination daily — and met her first husband, artist Charles White, while living in Chicago. She resigned from Dillard in 1942 and moved to New York City. There Catlett befriended painter Jacob Lawrence and studied lithography and other media at the Art Students League. Inspired by her studies with Ossip Zadkine, she began to incorporate abstract forms into her wood and stone sculptures.
In 1946, a grant supported her travel to Mexico to study its murals and graphic art. As Catlett had experienced the barbaric and deeply destructive system of racial segregation that the Jim Crow laws enforced in the United States, Mexico felt like a welcome escape. She would make the country her home and create much of her work there, divorcing White and marrying painter and printmaker Francisco Mora of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People's Graphic Workshop), or TGP, in 1947. She collaborated with TGP, a graphic arts workshop dedicated to social issues located in Mexico City, on a number of works, including one of her best-known linoleum cut prints, Sharecropper (1952). The heroic depiction of an anonymous farm worker was intended to draw attention to the plight of Black tenant farmers who were ruthlessly exploited by the era’s white landowners.
Another iconic work of Catlett’s is Black Unity (1968), a raised fist sculpted from cedar, smooth and gleaming, with one side taking the form of two faces that resemble carved African masks. In the same year, the raised fist, a powerful symbol of the Civil Rights struggle and emblem of the Black Power movement, had been immortalized by two Black American athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who raised their black-gloved fists during the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
Catlett was a professor of sculpture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s School of Fine Arts in Mexico City from 1958 until 1976, when she retired to focus on making art, exhibiting extensively in the years that followed. In 2003, she completed the Ralph Ellison Memorial in New York’s Riverside Park. That same year she received a lifetime achievement award from the International Sculpture Center. Her work is in the collections of museums worldwide, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Find a range of authentic Elizabeth Catlett art today on 1stDibs.
- Protea - XXI Century, Contemporary Floral Linocut, Black and WhiteBy Marta BozykLocated in Warsaw, PLMarta Bozyk (1973). A graduate of the Graphic Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She received a diploma with the Medal of the Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1998. Winner of the Scholarship of the Creative City of Krakow (2000) and the city of Mino in Japan (2001). She is also a winner of the Technical Award at the International Print Exhibition in Taichung, Taiwan (2008) and the Equal Prize International Triennial of Art Bitola in Macedonia. He belongs to the artistic female group...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsPaper, Linocut
- Woods 2 - Contemporary Linocut, Flora, Nature, Polish art, ist Young artBy Marta GarbaczewskaLocated in Warsaw, PL*** PLEASE NOTE the painting is not framed, photos with frame are only a visualisation The Gallery of Katarzyna Napiorkowska is one of the first commercial art galleries in Poland. ...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsLinocut
- Configuration II - Young artist, Figurative print, Linocut, Black & whiteBy Luiza KasprzykLocated in Warsaw, PLLUIZA KASPRZYK Studies at the Faculty of Graphics and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, in atelier of Lithographic Techniques of professor W. Warzywoda.Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsPaper, Linocut
- Pierre - XXI Century Contemporary Linocut Print, Surrealism, Black & whiteBy Anna GawlikowskaLocated in Warsaw, PLAnna Gawlikowska is a Polish artist born in 1980. She studied printmaking, painting, and graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts of Wroclaw in Poland in the workshops of professor...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsPaper, Linocut
- Hibiscus - XXI century, Linocut, Flower, Contemporary Figurative ArtBy Marta BozykLocated in Warsaw, PLHibiscus - Linocut Black and White XXI century, Linocut, Flower, Figurative ArtCategory
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsLinocut
- Saba - XXI Century Contemporary Linocut Print Surrealism, Black & whiteBy Anna GawlikowskaLocated in Warsaw, PLAnna Gawlikowska is a Polish artist born in 1980. She studied printmaking, painting, and graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts of Wroclaw in Poland in the workshops of professor...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsPaper, Linocut