Elizabeth Catlett was born in 1919 in Washington DC to teachers John and Mary Carson Catlett.   Catlett Was the first person to receive an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Iowa and also studied ceramics at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1946, Catlett moved to Mexico to escape American Jim Crow laws and continued to make prints, sculptures, and paintings. A prolific printmaker, Catlett combines elements of African, Mexico, and U.S. African American artwork.

Catlett’s artwork centers around her identity as a Black woman. She grew up seeing sharecroppers in North Carolina living and working in poverty. Most of these farmers were formerly enslaved people or their descendants who continued to be exploited by the sharecropping system in the American South. Her prints often feature these African American farmers who are elevated and shown as figures to be respected and revered. Through woodcuts and other printmaking methods, the economy of her lines and simplifying of forms creates images that are striking and modern.  

Elizabeth Catlett’s artwork is in the collection of many museums including: the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museum of American Art in Washington, DC.