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Elizabeth Catlett Abstract Prints

American, 1915-2012

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.

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Artist: Elizabeth Catlett
Blues, important signed/N lithograph by renowned African American artist Framed
By Elizabeth Catlett
Located in New York, NY
Elizabeth Catlett Blues, 1983 Color lithograph on cream wove paper Signed, titled, dated and numbered in graphite pencil on the front Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop...
Category

1980s Modern Elizabeth Catlett Abstract Prints

Materials

Lithograph, Pencil

Rebozos
By Elizabeth Catlett
Located in New York, NY
Lithograph on cream wove paper. From the first edition (of 2). Signed, titled, dated and numbered 38/50 in pencil by Catlett. Printed and published by the artist at the Taller de Grá...
Category

1960s Modern Elizabeth Catlett Abstract Prints

Materials

Lithograph

ALL THE PEOPLE Signed Lithograph, For My People-Margaret Walker, Rainbow Faces
By Elizabeth Catlett
Located in Union City, NJ
ALL THE PEOPLE is an original hand drawn limited edition lithograph by the highly acclaimed African-American woman artist Elizabeth Catlett, master printmaker and sculptor best known for her depictions of the African-American experience. ALL THE PEOPLE is graphic composition comprised of a brilliant multi color rainbow across the bottom of the image with a centered, rose beige textured circle filled with simple black line drawings of men, women, and children's faces, a blue sky like area on top consists of textural effects obtained from Japanese rice paper. This impressive composition by the master print maker and sculptor, Elizabeth Catlett is from the FOR MY PEOPLE suite of prints, a set of 6 lithographs illustrating the well known 1942 poem by Margaret Walker. "For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;" - Stanza from the poem FOR MY PEOPLE by Margaret Walker Print size 23” x 19”, Edition size 99, unframed color lithograph on archival Arches paper, 100% acid free, Edition printed using traditional hand lithography methods by J.K. Fine Art Editions Co, NJ. Published in 1992 by the Limited Editions Club, NY. About the artist - Elizabeth Catlett (born April 15, 1915, Washington, D.C., U.S.—died April 2, 2012, Cuernavaca, Mexico), American-born Mexican sculptor and printmaker renowned for her intensely political art. Catlett, a granddaughter of enslaved people, was born into a middle-class Washington family; her father was a professor of mathematics at Tuskegee Institute. After being disallowed entrance into the Carnegie Institute of Technology because she was Black, Catlett enrolled at Howard University (B.S., 1935), where she studied design, printmaking, and drawing and was influenced by the art theories of Alain Locke and James A...
Category

1990s Contemporary Elizabeth Catlett Abstract Prints

Materials

Lithograph

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Elizabeth Catlett abstract prints for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Elizabeth Catlett abstract prints available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Elizabeth Catlett in lithograph and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Elizabeth Catlett abstract prints, so small editions measuring 10 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of César Baldaccini, George Condo, and Jenny Holzer. Elizabeth Catlett abstract prints prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $2,750 and tops out at $20,000, while the average work can sell for $6,500.
Questions About Elizabeth Catlett Abstract Prints
  • 1stDibs ExpertFebruary 13, 2024
    How Elizabeth Catlett made her prints over the course of her career varies. She is most famous for her linoleum cut prints, which she learned to produce while studying at the Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico City, Mexico. It was this method that Catlett employed when creating 1952's Sharecropper, one of Catlett's most enduring images. She also created woodcut prints, screenprints and lithographic prints. On 1stDibs, explore a range of Elizabeth Catlett art.

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