Elizabeth Catlett
Storyboard Text
- At age six she realized she wanted to be an artist at age six. As a child, she drew paper dolls and sold them to girls in her neighborhood. In a high school art class, she carved an elephant out of soap, her first and only foray into sculpture until graduate school.
- In 1940, Catlett graduated from the University of Iowa with a master of fine arts degree in sculpture, the first the university ever awarded. While enrolled, Catlett and other Black students—includingMargaret Taylor-Burroughs(1915–2010), who founded theDuSable Museum—were unwelcome in the dorms and lived off campus. In 2017, the school opened theElizabeth Catlett Residence Hall.
- Another University of Iowa classmate, writerMargaret Walker(1915–1998), became a lifelong friend. In 1992, Catlett created six lithographs illustrating Walker’s poemFor My Peopleto honor the publication’s 50th anniversary.
- In 1941, when she was chair of Dillard University’s art department in New Orleans, Catlett planned to take her students to the Delgado Art Museum (now the New Orleans Museum of Art) to see a Picasso retrospective. However, the museum was located in City Park, which did not allow African American visitors at that time.
- After moving to Mexico City in 1946, Catlett continued her artistic development, studying sculpture and joining the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a print collective, as well as teaching. In 1958, she became the first woman professor of the sculpture at Mexico’s National School of Fine Arts at the National Autonomous University and rose to head of the department, a position she held until retiring in 1976.
- 1940 until 1942 Catlett taught drawing, painting, printmaking, and art history at Dillard University in New Orleans.
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