"Triangular Women"

(1915- ) was born in Washington D.C., studied at Howard University (1936), University of Iowa (MFA, 1940), studied under Ossip Zadkine and Grant Wood, teacher of painting and sculpture at Dillard University, (1940); Prairie View College, Hampton Institute, University of Mexico.

From the beginning of her career as an artist and a teacher in the early 1940s Catlett’s themes have reflected her concerns for social injustice, the human condition and her life as an African American woman and mother. Formally, her sculpture draws upon African and pre-Columbian traditions, as well as early modernism in Europe, the United States and Mexico.
She won first prize for sculpture at the Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1940 with “Mother Child” a marble produced when she was a graduate student at the University of Iowa. In paintings, Ms. Catlett is known for her double figures.
A fifty-year retrospective sculpture show of Mrs. Catlett’s works was held at the Neuberger Museum at Purchase, New York, February 1998. Quoting Maya Angelou, “Elizabeth Catlett is blessed with a caring heart, deep eyes, and a sure hand. She is a queen of the arts, and we, her subjects , are tremendously blessed by her stupendous gifts.” Elizabeth Catlett herself says, “Because I am a woman and know how a woman feels in body and in mind, I sculpt, draw, and print women.” “I was and still am, interested in bringing art to people who for one reason or another have little opportunity to see art or understand what it can do for them.”

Mrs. Catlett received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Neuberger Museum in 1998. Mrs. Catlett continues to create fabulously, wonderful works of art for us to enjoy and recognize

Photo by Quentin Moses © 2002