Elizabeth Catlett at June Kelly and the Neuberger Museum - New York, New York and Purchase, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Now in her 80 the African-American artist Elizabeth Catlett has been making powerfully affecting, politically committed figurative plastic art for many decades. Starting with an inspired combination of African and pre-Columbian influences, she added classic modernist form and the political vision of the Mexican muralists (she has lived in Mexico since 1947) The be derived is an art both compositionally striking and demonstrative of larger social concerns

The 50-year retrospective (1946-96) at the Neuberger Museum comprised 60 statuarys in a broad range of materials: alloy of copper terra-cotta, marble, stone and a range of wood-lands such as mahogany, pecan and cedar. This diversity demonstrates Catlett's interest in the physical specifics of sculpture; her forest-land carvings, for example, are polished to bring on the outside the highlights as well as the grain. In her surfaces and in her predilection for gently curving contours, the artist maintains a dialogue with modernist sculptors of that kind as Henry Moore and Ossip Zadkine.

Catlett chose from the beginning to concentrate upon a few broad themes: the persistence of injustice, black women as figures of physical and metaphysical nerve relations between mother and child. level in the earliest works, of the like kind as Tired (1946), a r terra-cotta depiction of an exhausted young woman seated, we diocese Catlett's recognition of interior power She portrays the African-American female as possessing an indomitable fortitude and dignity in the face of indifference and worse; the two her large cast-stone Mujer Reclinada (Reclining Woman), 1958 and the small, resonantly lyric Pensive (1963) evidence her feeling that women exemplify endurance. sum of two units later pieces, both titled naked Torso (1987 and 1994), exhibit her considerable ability in abstracting the human body; heavy thighs and breasts become circulared evocative forms radiating sensuality and strength

In the seven novel sculptures at June Kelly, Catlett continues to elucidate her chosen themes. Elvira, an arresting terra-cotta head with empty slits for eyes, looks back to Young Girl, done more than 50 years earlier. Star Gazer, a black marble reclining figure, shares a dreamy, voluptuous settle with Mujer Reclinada and the 1955 alloy of copper titled Reclining Female Nude.

The sum of two units shows, along with a selection of prints and drawings at Ellen Sragow Gallery, made it clear that Catlett is an artist of striking accomplishment, whose skill and reduce have not flagged in more than half a century

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