MS01.01.03.B01.F13.017

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Elizabeth Catlett is on of the great women of our time. She could be singled out and honored for many worthy contributions in the Fine Arts that bear the stamp of her hands in view of her splendid record of accomplishments as sculptor, printmaker and Univeersity teacher. But it is noteworthy here that mention be made of the meaning which she strives to give in her art. for art in the measure of her own life. It is what she is all about or seeks to be. The inocography of her art is humanistic in form. It shows man (in the African tradition being a Child of the Earth) as always taking an active part in the celebration of life by affirming his own god-likeness. Life is viewed in Miss. Catlett's art as a precious commodity. But it is full of toils and struggles. Black people are most often the subjects of her compositions and they seem to toil endlessly against the inhumane treatment that has been their lot since aarriving in this hemisphere more than three hundred years ago.
It is here in her work that an ethos distinctly black about our condition and time is born. But the larger meaning to be had in Miss Catlett's art is one which speaks to the conditions, that are prevelant wherever one sees man's inhumanity to man.