Catlett - "Mother and Child" One color lithograph of African American mother holding her child.

Elizabeth Catlett
American & Mexican (1915-2012)

Mother and Child C: 1945 • Lithograph on Paper 8 1/2" x 6 1/2"

John Catlett died in early 1915, before meeting his daughter, Alice Elizabeth. She was born just a few months later. He had taught at Tuskegee University and the local public school system. She, too, became an educator. But, the people she knew most intimately were those who remained. The strong mother and grandmother who raised her, and scrounged together enough money to send her to the predominately black Howard University when Carnegie Institute of Technology turned her away. She graduated Magna Cum Laude, meaning real good.

To a black woman, newly graduated and interested in sensitive portraits of African-American women and children, Iowa was the logical place to go. Why not? During her undergraduate studies she became interested in painter Grant Wood of American Gothic fame. While earning her M.F.A. at the University of Iowa she learned Wood’s unadorned portraiture style and translated it into stone carvings based on her own experiences as a black woman. For the rest of her life, scenes of African-American women and children dominated her art. She drew them, carved them and cast them, while tiptoeing through a society that didn’t know her subjects as well as she did.

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She moved to New Orleans to teach at Dillard College, arranging museum visits on off days to dodge their “No Colored” policies. She always found ways to jump over prejudice, moving to New York to study modern sculpture with a disciple of famed modernists, Brancusi and Moore. She made stop in Chicago and Atlanta. She traveled to Mexico on a fellowship and, finally, there she stayed.

Married to the Mexican artist Francisco Mora, she became head of the sculpture department at Mexico’s School of Fine Arts, a post she held until her retirement to Cuernavaca in 1975. There she continued to create modernist sculptures and paintings. Many ended up in leading museums around the world.

By the time Elizabeth Catlett died in 2012, she had spent so much of her life jumping over hurdles thrown in her path, that she vaulted all the way to the top echelons of the art world. All because she created art about the world she knew best. A world where mothers held their children a little tighter so they didn’t have to jump as many hurdles as she had.

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Gift of Mr. Louis Held, 66.11

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“She was barred from enrolling in Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1933 because she was black. In 2007 the school righted the wrong awarding her an honorary Doctorate. “

2.
“She is known for sensitive portraits of African-American mothers and their children, because she was one.”

3.
“A fervent follower of ‘American Gothic’ artist, Grant Wood, she ended up in a nasty dispute about her American citizenship.”

4.
“Most of her life was spent in Mexico with her husband, artist Francisco Mora. She finally renewed her American citizenship at the age of 87. Better late than never.”

Catlett Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1915

Born in Washington DC, the youngest of three children. Her mother, Mary, was a truant officer and her father, John, a teacher at Tuskegee University and the local public school system. Her father died shortly before she was born, forcing her mother to take a variety of odd jobs to support the family. Both parents were children of freed slaves.

1920s

As a child growing up in Washington, she was fascinated by the wood carving of a bird made by a father she never met. Her interest in art grew during her high school years and she decided to pursue a career as an art teacher.

1933

She was awarded a full scholarship to study art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. However, when she showed up to start fall classes, the school saw she was black and denied her entry. Instead she enrolled at Howard University, a predominately black school. She paid her tuition with her mother’s savings and scholarships.

1937

Moved to Durham, North Carolina, her mother’s hometown. There she taught high school art.

1938

Having become interested in the work of American Scene painter, Grant Wood, she enrolled in the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program at the University of Iowa to study with Wood.

1940

Graduated from the University of Iowa and moved to New Orleans to teach at Dillard University. Summers were spent in Chicago studying ceramics and lithography. There she met her first husband, Charles White, also an artist.

1942

White and Catlett moved to New York City where she taught adult education classes at the George Washington Carver School in Harlem. She also studied lithography at the Art Students League and learned modernist sculpture from Russian artist Ossip Zadkine who pointed her in a more abstract direction.

1946

Becoming more interested in social themes, she and her husband traveled to Mexico on a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship. There her marriage to White fell apart and he returned to America. She became affiliated with Taller de Grafica Popular, a graphic design collaborative. There she met artist Francisco Mora who became her second husband.

1949

A supporter of leftist social causes, she was arrested while protesting during a national railroad strike in Mexico. Her activities on social causes and her association with Taller de Grafica Popular, which had many communist members, led her to be declared an “undesirable alien” and barred from returning to America.

1958

Already a successful artist, she became the first female professor of sculpture and head of the sculpture department at Mexico’s School of Fine Arts in Mexico City.

1962

In reaction to being barred from America, she renounced her American citizenship and became a citizen of Mexico. There she and Mora raised a family of three sons who all went into creative careers.

1971

Colleagues and friends wrote letters to the U.S. State Department enabling her to gain a special permit to attend a solo exhibition of her work at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

1975

She retired from her position at Mexico’s School of Fine Arts and moved with her family to a studio and home in Cuernavaca, 35 miles southwest of Mexico City. There she was able to spend more time creating her lithographs and sculptures which were selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

1987

She and her husband were able to buy an apartment in Battery Park, New York where they spent part of each year. The bulk of their lives was still spent in Cuernavaca.

2002

Regained her American citizenship. However, her husband Francisco Mora died the same year.

2007

An administrator at Carnegie Mellon University heard about her being denied admittance due to the color of her skin and immediately informed school president, Jared Leigh Cohon. To right the wrong, President Cohon presented her with an honorary Doctorate degree.

2012

She died in her sleep at her studio and home in Cuernavaca. Her artists statement read: “No other field is closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. I had to believe that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity*.”

* Lightly edited to fit.