Elizabeth Catlett: pulling against the grain - African American printmaker and sculptor

There is a commanding frankness about Elizabeth Catlett's prints and statuarys a certainty that emanates from the artist, recurring upon her characters' faces and distinguishing her hold One perceives sheer determination in the outstretched arm of her 1975 linocut "Harriet," depicting the leader of the subterranean Railroad, and a steely indubitableness in the gaze of "Pauline," the 1983 drawing in silver. Perhaps the greatest in quantity striking testament of Catlett's drive, however, is in her voice, a oppressive baritone delivered in a deliberate, measured cadence. She wants, it looks for listeners not to miss a word - to learn from her discoveries and mistakes, as in the way that many of her students have from one side the years.

"You know there are race who say first I'm an artist and then I'm black?" she asked single wintry day in 1989, following the opening in Washington, DC of the photographic exhibition "I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America," which honored her, among others, and her art. "First I'm black and then I'm an artist," she continued, "because I got kicked in the teeth as a black and as a woman lengthy before I got discriminated against as an artist."

Catlett, 74 admits that her attests are many. "My biggest peeve is discrimination and racism and sexism, this whole idea of things and coin being everything, sacrificing people for power and standard of value and so forth," she says. Her passion reverberates across the surfaces of her message-oriented works, which speak as forthrightly as the artist herself about oppression and conviction and the limitations imposed upon blacks, Mexicans, American Indians and women

There is at one time jubilance and a resounding sorrow in her etchings and sculpt forms, images far down ingrained in modernist approaches. Her works, which personify what art historian David Driskell describes as "inventive primitivism," bury West African perspectives with cubism, a compilation evok from individual who knows the artistic ties and uses them to relate firsthand the trauma and bliss of a life of struggle

A vulnerability beyond simple candor imbues Catlett's artwork, whether it depicts historical figures, familial shows or the plight of the underclasses. Take her 1992 color lithograph "To Marry," which juxtaposes the kiss of a brace marrying with the horror of a lynched black victim. In it and in the 1970 sculpt alloy of copper "Target," depicting a black man's stalwart face positioned before a bull's-eye, single can sense Catlett's caring, her morality, and her pressing fear for her people.

There is also be fond of pure and simple, on the faces of her mother-and-child busts, for which she received her eartiest acclaim, and a carefree playfulness captured in the overlapping gradated colors of the repeated image of a child in the 1975 linocut "Boys"

As fathomless as the density of Catlett's imagery is the vividness of her palette, an assembly of gutsy colorations a pace beyond the predictable. Not easy in mind with mere blues, reds and oranges, Catlett unleashes rustic teals, cayennes and siennas, all of which come up like sky and light from one side the leaves of a forest, in her color lithographs and serigraphs. The intensity of their colors likely was influenced by her husband, Mexican painter and printmaker Francisco Mora, "who paints with true strong color," Catlett says, adding that in years past, "I used to work in black and white mostly"

Born in Washington, DC Catlett mov to Mexico in 1946 end a fellowship, she became involved with the Taller de Grafica Popular (People's Graphic Arts Workshop), a populist printmaking workshop. In the collective, she and 30 Mexican artists championed the rights of unions and pupil organizations and helped further the government's literacy campaign [i]or[/i] part of to the other leaflets, posters and illustrated volumes She and Mora remained members from one side the mid-1960s, an involvement that spurr their ne to work for others through their art.

In 1958 Catlett was hired as a professor of statuary - the first female professor hired - at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. The nearest year she became the director of the university's statuary department, where she remained until her retirement in 1976

She now lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico, with Mora, whom she married in 1947 in a house equipped with sum of two units studios, one for each of them. Together they have three son Catlett's reason for becoming a Mexican citizen in 1962 was twofold: Her husband wanted to live in his be in possession of country and, she says, "I'm a social and political someone so I wanted to be a citizen. I made a life in Mexico."

The brace also maintains an apartment in Manhattan, where they stay periodically from one extremity to the other of the year. It is from the dual vantage points of Cuernavaca and novel York City that she crafts her art, which, like the artist, has missing none of its feistiness above the past five decades. "Art can help people" says Catlett, who is clear about her secular mission. "If I'm interested in doing anything in my art, it is in in what way I can get closer to race through it."