Elizabeth Catlett - Infinite Women

Born: 15 April 1915, United States
Died: 2 April 2012
Country most active: Mexico
Also known as: Alice Elizabeth Catlett, Elizabeth Catlett Mora

The following is republished from the US Department of State. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

In a career spanning more than 70 years, Elizabeth Catlett has created sculptures that celebrate the heroic strength and endurance of African-American and Mexican working-class women. With simple, clear shapes she evokes both the physical and spiritual essence of her subjects. Her hardy laborers and nurturing mothers radiate both power and a timeless dignity and calm. Whether working in wood, stone, bronze, or clay, Catlett reveals an extraordinary technical virtuosity, a natural ability to meld her curving female forms with the grain, whorls, color, or luster of her chosen medium. The beauty of her subjects is matched by the beauty she reveals in her sculptural materials.

Throughout her career, Catlett has been a political progressive committed to improving the lives of African-American and Mexican women, and she has often used her art explicitly to advance their cause. She has also protested, picketed, and even been arrested in her quest to win justice for those she describes as “my people.” Moving from the United States to Mexico in 1946, she was eventually identified as an “undesirable alien” by the U.S. State Department. For nearly a decade she was barred from visiting the United States.

Despite these struggles, Catlett’s art reveals no trace of bitterness or despair. Indeed, she has remained true to the universal, life-affirming themes that first animated her sculpture in the 1940s’the beauty of the human form and the nobility of the human condition. At age 95, she continues to create, guided by those unshakeable ideals.

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.

Multi-disciplinary artist Elizabeth Catlett met her first husband in art school, marrying in 1941. As an article from The Johnson Collection notes, during most of their marriage, Charles W. White’s achievements overshadowed his wife’s despite the similarity of their styles and subject matter. After a few years, however, Catlett’s work was recognised with a fellowship that funded the couple travelling to Mexico to study at the Taller de Gráfica Popular. At the famed graphic artists’ collective and workshop, she began exploring the emerging printmaking technique of linoleum cut. And as her career flourished, the marriage disintegrated, with her filing for divorce only a few months after arriving in Mexico. Catlett continued making art into her nineties and her sculptures and prints have been the subject of more than fifty solo exhibitions at various museums and galleries.