Catlett, Elizabeth, 1915-2012

Elizabeth Catlett April 15, 1915, Washington, DC – April 2, 2012, Cuernavaca, Mexico; Both her mother and father were the children of freed slaves; completed her undergraduate studies at Howard University, graduating cum laude 1937, professors included artist Lois Mailou Jones and philosopher Alain Locke, also came to know artists James Herring, James Wells, and future art historian James A. Porter; After graduation, she moved to her mother's hometown of Durham, NC to teach high school; entered the graduate program of the University of Iowa, studied drawing and painting with Grant Wood and sculpture with Harry Edward Stinson, One of her roommates was future novelist and poet Margaret Walker. Catlett graduated in 1940, one of three to earn the first masters in fine arts from the university, and the first African-American woman to receive the degree; moved to New Orleans to work at Dillard University; during her summers, she studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago and lithography at the South Side Community Art Center; met her first husband, artist Charles Wilbert White, married in 1941; moved to New York, 1942, taught adult education classes at the George Washington Carver School in Harlem, studied lithography at the Art Students League of New York worked with Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine, during her time in New York, she met intellectuals and artists such as Gwendolyn Bennett, W. E. B. Dubois, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, and Paul Robeson; In 1946, Catlett received a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship to travel with her husband to Mexico and study. Shortly after moving to Mexico that same year, Catlett divorced White; In 1947, she entered the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a workshop dedicated to prints promoting leftist social causes and education. There she met printmaker and muralist Francisco Mora, whom she married in the same year, had three children, all of whom developed careers in the arts: Francisco in jazz music, Juan Mora Catlett in filmmaking, and David in the visual arts; In 1948, she entered the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" to study wood sculpture with José L. Ruíz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zúñiga, also met Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros; Catlett worked with the Taller until 1966; Catlett came under surveillance by the United States Embassy, was barred from entering the United States and declared an "undesirable alien."; In 1962, she renounced her American citizenship and became a Mexican citizen; Very early in her career, Catlett accepted a Public Works of Art Project assignment with the federal government for unemployed artists during the 1930s. However, she was fired for lack of initiative, very likely due to immaturity. The experience gave her exposure to the socially-themed work of Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias; Catlett's work can be found in major collections such as those of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, National Museum in Prague, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, the Instituto Politécnico Nacional,Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Iowa, the June Kelly Gallery and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York