“Madonna” by Elizabeth Catlett

"Madonna" by Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett: “Madonna”, 1982. Lithograph. Gift of Samella Lewis. The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery.

Elizabeth Catlett was a prominent Black and Mexican artist whose art centered the experience of Black women and the intersection of race, feminism, and social equity. Catlett is recognized for her many depictions of mother and child, which includes The Madonna.

• Watch clips from Elizabeth Catlett’s interview with the National Visionary Leadership Project. Here is what it means for her to be a leader.
• Read more about Elizabeth Catlett and view 22 of her works on the MoMa’s website.

About "Madonna"

“A work of art may be spiritually, emotionally, or intellectually rewarding, especially in the realm of the real/ordinary/popular. It does not need revolution as its subject in order to be revolutionary…but it can provoke thought and prepare us for change.”

- Elizabeth Catlett, “Modern Women: Women Artists of the Moma”

Created with Lithograph on paper, the image titled "Madonna" depicts an African American mother cradling her two children. Each of the renditions are pencil signed and dated 1982 along the lower right and numbered on the lower left. Catlett is recognized for her many depictions of mother and child. The most well-known may be her master's thesis, “Negro Mother and Child,” which was made of limestone sculpture and won first place in sculpture at the 1940 Chicago American Negro Exposition (NMAAHC).

She followed up Madonna (1982) a decade later with Madonna II (1991). The Madonna II portrays her own extended expression of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child – invoking the traditional imagery of Renaissance painters.

About Elizabeth Catlett

Alice Elizabeth Catlett was a “sculptor, painter, and printmaker well-known for producing politically charged black Expressionist sculptures and prints in the 1960s and the 1970s” (Artnet). Born in Washington, D.C., in 1915, Catlett knew she wanted to be an artist since she was six. Against the backdrop of a World War, the Great Depression, and Jim & Jane Crow laws, Catlett grew into her own as an artist greatly influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, European Modernism, African art, American Regionalism, the Chicago Renaissance, Pre-Columbian art, Mexican Muralism, and Post-Revolution Populism and the Black Arts Movement. After having her acceptance to Carnegie Mellon rescinded due to her race, she attended Howard University, where she received her BFA in Art. After serving in teaching positions, she later became the first woman to receive an MFA in sculpture from the University of Iowa. Her mentor and most influential teacher, painter Grant Wood, advised her to “take as her subject what she knew best” (Schwartz’s Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art).

From printmaking to sculpture, Catlett found each method a tool for social change. After working across Chicago and New York, she was able to study lithography. Her interest in lino-cuts grew once in Mexico City while conducting a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship. When she moved to Mexico in 1947, her work continued to blend the traditions of many. Catlett found both inspiration, community, and love (She met her second husband, Francisco Mora, there, and they had three children) at El Taller de Grafica Popular. However, a consequence of the U.S. declaring the TGP a “Communist Front Organization” was Catlett being banned alongside other members from entering her own country (Stanley Museum).

Elizabeth Catlett was a resistor, and her obituary ensures she is remembered and celebrated as such. Prior to being banned from the U.S, she had been arrested during a railroad workers' protest in Mexico City in 1958. Even once she became a Mexican citizen in 1962 (she regained her U.S. citizenship in the early 2000s), she remained involved in Black political life in the states. She continued to create art and resist until she passed away at the age of 96 on April 2, 2012, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Museums and galleries have held over fifty solo exhibitions of Catlett’s sculptures and prints in the last half-century. Exhibit names such as “Speaking Out: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett” (Toledo Museum of Art), “Elizabeth Catlett: Artists as Activists” (Reginald Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture), and “Elizabeth Catlett: Wake Up in Glory” denote her commitment to using her voice and advocating for justice. Malin Gallery lists other solo exhibitions mounted at “The Modern Art Museum, Mexico City (1970), The Atlanta Center for Black Art (1972), The Howard University Gallery of Art (1972), The Studio Museum in Harlem (1972, 1994), Southern University (1974), Scripps College (1975), the Malcolm Brown Gallery (1981), the New Orleans Museum of Art (1983), the African American Museum of Dallas (1984), Spelman College (1985), the Museo Diego Rivera in Guanajuato, Mexico (1987), the Neuberger Museum of Art (1998) and the Bronx Museum (2011).” Her work is in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Iowa, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico.

“Artists should work to the end that love, peace, justice, and equal opportunity prevail all over the world; to the end that all people take joy in full participation in the rich material, intellectual, and spiritual resources of this world’s lands, peoples, and goods.”

- Elizabeth Catlett, “Modern Women: Women Artists of the Moma”

Reflection Questions

• Elizabeth Catlett lived from 1915 – 2012, where current events influenced where she could attend school, live, work, and exist freely. How have current events influenced your day-to-day life and passions?
• How else have you witnessed art and cultural work used as a tool for social change?

Learn More

• Learn more about the family of Elizabeth Catlett and Francisco Mora.
• Samella Lewis is an artist, art historian, and collector. They were a student of Catlett and owns the largest collection of her work.
• Watch a clip from an interview with Samella Lewis about Catlett.
• Watch a clip from an interview with Samella Lewis and grandson Unity Lewis about the tradition of Black Artists.
• Watch a short video of Catlett’s exhibit “Elizabeth Catlett: Wake Up In Glory," where Unity Lewis shares personal anecdotes about Elizabeth Catlett.
• Buy her biography Elizabeth Catlett: An American Artist in Mexico (UWA Press)
• Listen to a podcast about her titled “The Great Women Artists” with art historian and author of her biography, Dr. Melanie Herzog. (Apple Podcasts)