Elizabeth Catlett @ the Whitney

I am the Black woman

On a recent visit to the Whitney Museum in New York, I was introduced to the work of Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). I have since learned more about her remarkable and inspiring life story.

On display at the Whitney were prints from her linocut series, "I am the Negro woman", 1946-47, retitled "I am the Black woman" in 1989. I found these prints to have great visual and emotional power.

I have always worked hard in America

In the fields

In other folks' home

I have given the world my songs

In Sojourner Truth I fought for the rights
of women as well as Blacks

In Harriet Tubman I helped
hundreds to freedom

In Phyllis Wheatley I proved intellectual equality
in the midst of slavery

My role has been important
in organizing the unorganized

I have studied in ever increasing numbers

My reward has been bars between
me and the rest of the land

I have special reservations

special houses

and a special fear for my loved ones

My right is a future of equality
with other Americans

The granddaughter of freed slaves, Catlett spent much of her life as a teacher. She completed her undergraduate work at Howard University.

She was also admitted into the Carnegie Institute of Technology but was refused admission when the school discovered she was black. In 2007, this came to the attention of the president of Carnegie Mellon University, who was deeply appalled that such a thing had happened. The next year, President Cohon presented Catlett with an honorary Doctorate degree and a one-woman show of her art was presented on the campus of Carnegie Mellon.

While a graduate student at the University of Iowa, she was required to live out of residence because of her race. After graduate school in the 1940's, she accepted a position at Dillard University in New Orleans. There, as a person of colour, she was required to make special arrangements to attend shows at a particular gallery.

Catlett received a fellowship which allowed her to travel to Mexico to pursue studies in printmaking, choosing the venue because it aligned with her interest in social activism. Because of the Communist affiliations of her associates in Mexico, she was ultimately barred from re-entering the U.S. In 1962 she renounced her American citizenship and became a citizen of Mexico.

Catlett turned from printmaking to sculpture in later years, receiving recognition and awards. Art historian Melanie Herzog has called Catlett "the foremost African American woman artist of her generation." In her later years, she regained her American citizenship.

Wrote Catlett,

"No other field is closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity."