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Elizabeth Catlett (b. April 15, 1915. –d. April 2, 2012) was an African-American graphic artist and sculptor best known for her depictions of the African-American experience in the 20th century, which often had the female experience as their focus. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C. to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of freed slaves. It was difficult for a black woman in this time to pursue a career as a working artist, and Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship awarded to her in 1946 allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she would work with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and head the sculpture department of the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she would never give up the former. Her work is a mixture of abstract and figurative in the Modernist tradition, with influence from African and Mexican art traditions. According to the artist, the main purpose of her work is to convey social messages rather than pure aesthetics. While not very well known to the general public, her work is heavily studied by art students looking to depict race, gender and class issues. During her lifetime, Catlett received many awards and recognitions including membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, the Art Institute of Chicago Legends and Legacy Award, honorary doctorates from Pace University and Carnegie Mellon and the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture. ==Life== Catlett was born and raised in Washington, DC.〔 Both her mother and her father were the children of freed slaves, and her grandmother told her stories about the capture of blacks in Africa and the hardships of plantation life.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher= International Sculpture Center )〕 She was the youngest of three children. Both parents worked in education. Her mother was a truant officer and her father has taught at Tuskegee University then at the DC public school system.〔 Her father died before she was born, leaving her mother to hold several jobs to support the household.〔〔〔 Her interest in art began early. As a child she became fascinated by a wood carving of a bird that her father made. In high school, she studied art with a descendant of Frederick Douglass.〔 Catlett did her undergraduate studies at Howard University although it was not her first choice.〔 She was admitted into the Carnegie Institute of Technology but she was refused admission when the school found out she was black.〔〔 But in 2007, as Cathy Shannon of E&S Gallery, was giving a talk to a youth group at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in Pittsburgh, PA she recounted Catlett's tie to Pittsburgh because of this injustice. Fortunately, an administrator with Carnegie Mellon University was in the audience and heard the story for the first time. She immediately told the story to the school's president,Jared Leigh Cohon who was unaware of it as well, and deeply appalled that such a thing had happened. He vowed to correct the injustice. and he did just that. In 2008, President Cohon presented Mrs. Catlett with an honorary Doctorate degree and a one-woman show of her art was presented by E&S Gallery at The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University.〔http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/May/may15_catlettexhibition〕 While at Howard University, Catlett's professors included artist Lois Mailou Jones and philosopher Alain Locke .〔 She also came know artists James Herring, James Wells and future art historian James A. Porter .〔 Her tuition was paid for by her mother’s saving and scholarships that the artist earned, and she graduated with honors in 1937.〔〔〔〔 At the time the idea of a career as an artist for blacks was far-fetched, so she did her undergraduate studies with the aim of being a teacher.〔 After graduation she moved to her mother’s hometown of Durham, NC to teach high school.〔〔 Because Catlett became interested in the work of landscape artist Grant Wood, she entered the graduate program of the University of Iowa .〔 There she studied drawing and painting with Wood as well as sculpture with Henry Stinson.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher= University of Iowa )〕 Wood advised her to depict images of what she knew best, so Catlett began sculpting images of African-American women and children.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher= Galerie Myrtis )〕 However, despite being accepted to the school, she was not permitted to stay in the dormitories, requiring her to rent a room off campus.〔 One of her roommates was future novelist and poet Margaret Walker .〔 Catlett graduated in 1940, one of three to earn the first masters in fine arts from the university and the first African-American woman to receive the degree.〔〔〔 Later in life, Catlett donated money to the university to found the Elizabeth Catlett Mora Scholarship Fund, which support African-American and Latino students studying printmaking.〔 After Iowa, Catlett moved to New Orleans to work at Dillard University, spending the summer breaks in Chicago. There she studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago and lithography at the South Side Community Art Center .〔〔〔 In Chicago she also met her first husband, artist Charles Wilbert White. The couple married in 1941.〔〔 In 1942, the couple moved to New York, where Catlett taught adult education classes at the George Washington Carver School in Harlem. She also studied lithography at the Art Students League of New York and received private instruction from Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine .〔〔〔 Zadkine urged her to add abstract elements to her figurative work.〔 During her time in New York, she met intellectuals and artists such as Gwendolyn Bennet, W.E.B. Dubois, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglass and Paul Robeson .〔〔 In 1946, Catlett received a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship to travel with her husband to Mexico and study.〔〔 She accepted the grant in part because at the time American art was trending toward the abstract while she was interested in art related to social themes.〔 Shortly after moving to Mexico that same year, Catlett divorced White.〔 In 1947, she entered the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a workshop dedicated to graphic promoting leftist social causes and education. There she met printmaker and muralist Francisco Mora, who she married in the same year.〔〔〔 The couple had three children, all of whom developed careers in the arts: Francisco in jazz music, Juan in filmmaking and David in the visual arts. The last worked as his mother’s assistant doing the heavy aspects of sculpting when she no longer could.〔〔 In 1948, she entered the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" to study wood sculpture with José L. Ruíz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zúñiga .〔〔 During this time in Mexico she became more serious about her war and more dedicated to the work it demanded.〔 She also met Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and David Alfaro Siqueiros .〔 She worked with the Taller until 1966, but the fact that a number of its members were Communist Party members, as well as her first husband and her political activism such as her arrest in 1949 while protesting during a railroad strike in Mexico City, brought her under surveillance by the US embassy.〔〔 She was eventually barred from entering the United States and declared an "undesirable alien" unable to enter to country to visit her ill mother before she died.〔 In 1962, she renounced her American citizenship and became a Mexican citizen.〔〔〔 In 1971, after a letter writing campaign to the State Department by colleagues and friends, she was finally issued a special visit to attend an exhibition of her work at the Studio Museum in Harlem .〔〔 After retiring from her teaching position at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, she moved to the city of Cuernavaca, Morelos in 1975.〔 In 1983, she and Mora bought an apartment in Battery Park City, NY where from then until Mora’s death in 2002, the couple spent part of the year.〔〔〔 Catlett regained her American citizenship in 2002.〔〔 Catlett remained an active artist until her death.〔〔 The artist died peacefully in her sleep at her studio/home in Cuernavaca on April 2, 2012 at the age of 96.〔〔 She was survived by her three sons, ten grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Elizabeth Catlett」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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