ELIZABETH CATLETT
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Elizabeth Catlett Mora (April 15, 1915-April 2, 2012) was an African-American sculptor and printmaker. Catlett is best known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which are seen as politically charged.
Catlett was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of three children. Both of her parents were teachers. She attended the Lucretia Mott Elementary School, Dunbar High School, and then Howard University where she studied design, printmaking and drawing. In an interview in December 1981 in Artist and Influence magazine, she stated that she changed her major to painting because of the influence of James A. Porter, and because there was no sculpture division at Howard at the time. She received her BS cum laude from Howard in 1935. She then worked as a high school teacher in North Carolina but left after two years, frustrated by the low teaching salaries for black people.
While living and working in Harlem, New York, she was briefly married to Charles White, another famous realism artist.
In 1947, she married Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and made Mexico her permanent home, later becoming a Mexican citizen. They have three sons, including film director Juan Mora. Her granddaughter, Naima Mora, was the Cycle 4 winner of the America's Next Top Model television show. Catlett's sculpture "Naima" is of Naima as a child. After retiring in 1975, Elizabeth Catlett continued to be active in the Cuernavaca, Mexico, art community until her death in 2012 at age 96.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
| 2002 | Elizabeth Catlett: Sculptures and Prints, The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH |
| Elizabeth Catlett: Recent Sculpture, June Kelly Gallery. New York | |
| 1999 | Elizabeth Catlett: Living Legend, Bomani Gallery, San Francisco, CA |
| 1998 | Elizabeth Catlett Sculpture: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; monograph essays by Michael Brenson, Ph.D. and Lowery Stoke Sims, Ph.D.; traveling exhibition |
| Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpture, June Kelly Gallery, New York | |
| Elizabeth Catlett: Prints & Drawings, Sragow Gallery, New York | |
| 1996 | Prints from Mexico, curated by Jerald R. Green, Queens College Art Center, Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Flushing, NY |
| Struggle and Serenity: The Visionary Art of Elizabeth Catlett, curated by Mora Beauchamp-Byrd, The Caribbean Cultural Center/African Diaspora Institute, New York | |
| In Rare Form, guest curator, June Lambla; essay by Melanie Herzog, Ph.D.; Afro-American Cultural Center, Charlotte, NC | |
| 1994 | In the Hemisphere of Love: Elizabeth Catlett and Francisco Mora, Isobel Neal Gallery, Chicago, IL |
| 1993 | Sculpture, catalogue essay by Lowery Stokes Sims, June Kelly Gallery, New York |
| The Elizabeth Catlett Exhibition, James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD | |
| Elizabeth Catlett: Works on Paper, 1944-1992, organized by Hampton University Museum, VA; traveling exhibition; essays by Dr. Samella S. Lewis and Dr. Richard J. Powell | |
| 1992 | A Courtyard Apart: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett and Francisco Mora, catalogue essay by Dr. Floyd Coleman, introduction by Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; traveling exhibition |
| African American Women Artists: Elizabeth Catlett and Lois Mailou Jones, Montclair Art Museum, NJ | |
| Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, AL | |
| Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpture and Prints, Malcolm Brown Gallery, Shaker Heights, OH | |
| Pelloon Gallery, Washington, DC | |
| Sculpture and Print exhibition, curated by Ernestine Brown of the Malcolm Brown Gallery, Shaker Heights, OH | |
| 1990 | Columbus Museum of Art, OH |
| 1989 | Junior Black Academy Gallery, Dallas, TX |
| 1987 | Elizabeth Catlett: Print Retrospective, Jamaica Arts Center, Queens NY |
| Museo Diego Rivera, Cervantino Festival, Guanajuato, Guan, Mexico | |
| Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpture/ Francisco Mora: Watercolors, Arizona State | |
| 1986 | University Museum, Tempe, AZ |
| 1985 | Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS |
| Spelman College, Atlanta, GA | |
| 1984 | Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA |
| Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA | |
| University of Mississippi, University, MS | |
| Howard University, Washington, DC |
Selected Group Exhibitions
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS
Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI
National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
The DuSable Museum of African American History, Chicago, IL
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City
Narodniko Musea (National Museum), Prague, Czechoslovakia
The Burgess Fine Arts Collection, New York, NY
