Elizabeth CatlettMAN Signed Woodcut, Face Portrait, Paper-Doll Cutout People, Mexican Culture2003
2003
About the Item
- Creator:Elizabeth Catlett (1915 - 2012, American)
- Creation Year:2003
- Dimensions:Height: 26 in (66.04 cm)Width: 17.75 in (45.09 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Mint condition, never been framed or mounted, pencil signed, titled, dated Printers Proof aside from the numbered edition of 250 printed in 2003, print documentation/COA provided, from the master printers private collection.
- Gallery Location:Union City, NJ
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU83237310872
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.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Union City, NJ
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 3 days of delivery.
- FLOWERS Signed Woodcut Young Woman Hoop Earring Tropical Floral Dress, WoodgrainBy Otto NealsLocated in Union City, NJFLOWERS is an original limited edition woodcut print by the African-American painter and sculptor, Otto Neals. The woodblock used to print FLOWERS was hand carved by Otto Neals and printed in two colors - burnt orange and black on Rives BFK printmaking paper, 100% acid free, enhanced with hand colored accents. FLOWERS portrays an exotic portrait of a young black woman posed in profile with long dark wavy hair, looking downward wearing a lively floral print dress and large silver hoop earrings...Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- CLOSE UP Hand Drawn Lithograph Closeup Crowd Portrait Blondie T-Shirt, CigaretteBy Lester JohnsonLocated in Union City, NJCLOSE UP is an original hand drawn lithograph by the NY figurative expressionist painter, Lester Johnson. Printed using hand lithography techniques on archival ARCHES paper 100% acid...Category
1980s Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- BROTHERS Signed Lithograph, Portrait Young Boys, Peach, Turquoise, Pink, BrownBy Aldo LuongoLocated in Union City, NJBROTHERS is an original hand drawn lithograph by the Argentine artist, Aldo Luongo. Printed in 1975 at Circle Gallery NYC using traditional hand lithography methods on archival Arche...Category
1970s Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- MARY and EDDIE Signed Lithograph, Art Deco Portrait, Red Hair, Shawl-collar CoatBy Robin MorrisLocated in Union City, NJMARY and EDDIE by the woman artist Robin Morris, is an original limited edition lithograph printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Coventry Rag paper, 100% acid free. M...Category
1980s Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- BACKYARD Signed Lithograph, Black Couple, African American Heritage, QuiltsBy James DemarkLocated in Union City, NJBACKYARD by the artist James Denmark is an original hand drawn, limited edition lithograph printed on archival Somerset paper, 100% acid free using traditional hand lithography techniques. BACKYARD is one of Denmark's colorful collage compositions of everyday African American life - a soulful Southern country folk scene featuring a standing woman wearing a flaming red orange skirt, multicolored wallpaper floral print top, and dark indigo print head wrap; her male companion dressed in blue denim jeans, dark indigo print shirt and denim hat sitting in the backyard as the patchwork quilts flutter on the clothesline. Vivid coloration and textures captivate the eye with variety - deep violet, reds, fiery orange, touches of yellow, dark black and shades of blue - a very strong impression and fine example of hand lithography! Print size - 38 x 23 inches, unframed, mint condition, pencil signed and numbered by James Denmark Edition size - 250, plus proofs Year published - 1996 James Denmark, born in Winter Haven, Florida in 1936 is one of the few masters of collage. He utilizes an exacting process to cut and assemble brightly hand colored papers, fabric and objects into familiar figures and images. Denmark’s grandmother, a wire...Category
1990s Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- NY SCENE: FACES Signed Lithograph, Portrait Women Red Hair, Man Blue Yankee CapBy Lester JohnsonLocated in Union City, NJNY SCENE: FACES is an original hand drawn lithograph by the NY figurative expressionist painter, Lester Johnson. Printed using hand lithography techniques on archival Somerset printmaking paper 100% acid free, full bleed image, no margins. NY SCENE: FACES presents a city street scene portraying a head portrait of two doll-like women's faces looking in opposite directions. The two men positioned above them in the background also looking away, not at each other, all crowded together on a busy city street. The young women with full wavy auburn hair and red lips are the focal point, one wearing lively checkered print dress, the other a strand of white pearls. Easily visible on the upper right corner, one male figure sports a navy blue New York YANKEES cap...Category
1980s Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Girls - Woodcut print by Mino Maccari - 1927By Mino MaccariLocated in Roma, ITHistorical Scene is an original print realized by Mino Maccari in 1927. Beautiful black and white woodcut print on ivory-colored paper. Included a passport: 35 x 28 cm. Good condit...Category
1920s Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- Lord on the Sand Castle - XX century Black & White Woodcut PrintBy Franciszek BunschLocated in Warsaw, PLIllustration for Jules de la Medelen's "Lord on the Sand Castle" ("Le Marquis Des Saffras") FRANCISZEK BUNSCH (born in 1926) Franciszek Bunsch was born in Bielsko in 1926. He studie...Category
1950s Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Lord on the Sand Castle - XX century Black & White Woodcut PrintBy Franciszek BunschLocated in Warsaw, PLIllustration for Jules de la Medelen's "Lord on the Sand Castle" ("Le Marquis Des Saffras") FRANCISZEK BUNSCH (born in 1926) Franciszek Bunsch was born in Bielsko in 1926. He studie...Category
1950s Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsPaper, Woodcut
- Portrait - Woodcut after Jean Paul Sauget - 1921Located in Roma, ITPortrait is a woodcut print print on paper, realized after Jean Paul Sauget for Maurice Magre's Les Soirs d'Opium. Published in 1921. Good conditions.Category
1920s Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- Nicolas Party, Portrait with Shells - Original Woodcut, Signed PrintBy Nicolas PartyLocated in Hamburg, DENicolas Party (Swiss, b. 1980) Portrait with Shells, 2021 Medium: Woodcut on HM-5 Gampi-shi Dimensions: 45.7 x 38.1 cm (18 x 15 inches) Edition of 50: Hand-signed and numbered Condit...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Prints
MaterialsWoodcut
- Nicolas Party, Portrait of a Seahorse Necklace - Original Woodcut, Signed PrintBy Nicolas PartyLocated in Hamburg, DENicolas Party (Swiss, b. 1980) Portrait of a Seahorse Necklace, 2021 Medium: Woodcut on HM-5 gampi-shi Dimensions: 28.3 × 24.1 cm (11 1/10 × 9 ½ in) Edition of 100 + 8 AP: Hand-signe...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Prints
MaterialsWoodcut