Elizabeth Catlett

Born April 15, 1919, in Washington D.C. Died April 2, 2012, in Cuernavaca, Mexico

Elizabeth Catlett was a distinguished sculptor and lithographer. She was the first student to complete the requirements for the University of Iowa’s Master of Fine Arts degree in 1940. Catlett’s major commissions include a bronze bust of poet Phillis Wheatly for Jackson State University, a sculpture of musician Louis Armstrong for the city of New Orleans, and a bronze relief for Howard University. After receiving a Rosenwald Fellowship, she moved to Mexico in 1946, and became a Mexican citizen in 1962. Cattlet was the first woman professor of sculpture in the School of Fine Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.