The work of artist Elizabeth Catlett is on display now at the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover.
Born in the early 20th century, Catlett endured discrimination as a student but persevered, studying art at Howard University and the University of Iowa. Her dedication to both mastering technique and telling untold stories through her art made her a towering figure, respected among American artists, says the Biggs Museum’s Curator of American Art, Laura Fravell.
“Elizabeth Catlett is a titan in American art,” Fravell says. “She's one of the best known artists of the 20th century and a pioneering black woman in her field.”
Beginning her artistic career as a sculptor, Catlett was a student of the influential American painter Grant Wood, best known for his work “American Gothic.” Wood encouraged Catlett to portray the things she knew best. For Catlett, that meant compelling works highlighting Black culture, especially Black womanhood.
“These are people who surrounded her in life,” Fravell explains. “These are strong, proud women who are almost unrepresented in the art of her time, and she wanted to capture their joys and their sorrows.”
Catlett’s art is also activistic, with a dedication to social, political, and economic justice.
In 1947, she began working with printmaking at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, an art collective in Mexico City. While there, she met other famous 20th century artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. After participating in a strike in the late 1940’s, Catlett was arrested by Mexican authorities and declared an “undesirable alien” by the U.S. government. She would spend decades in Mexico, becoming a Mexican citizen in 1962. The United States would later restore her citizenship.
As her work continued, she began to be more widely recognized and honored in American artistic circles, with exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and her native Washington D.C.
In 2008, Carnegie Mellon University, which had denied Catlett entrance in 1931 because of her race, honored her with an honorary doctorate. In 2017, the University of Iowa, which allowed her to attend but prohibited her from living on campus, named a new residence hall in her honor.
Printmaking was a good fit for Catlett’s social conscience, the Biggs Museum’s Fravell says.
“Prints lend themselves to political imagery because you can make a lot of them relatively inexpensively and make many, many copies of them to distribute,” she says.
Among her most famous works is the 1950s linoleum cut “Sharecropper,” as well as public sculptures of Sojourner Truth and Louis Armstrong. Fravell says an important tenet of Catlett’s career was bringing art to where people are.
“She often spoke about putting art in service of the people, that it wasn't just something for her personally to do to express herself, but it had a purpose as well in the wider world,” she says.
The exhibition of Catlett’s work comes from the collection of Dr. Samella Lewis, a student and friend of Catlett, who became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in art history. Lewis called Catlett, “my friend and my mentor in art.”
The Biggs Museum’s exhibition, “The Art of Elizabeth Catlett: from the Collection of Samella Lewis,” is on display through June 22.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
