Elizabeth Catlett (American, active in Mexico, 1915–2012)
Head (Head of a Man)
INV-2621
Elizabeth Catlett (American, active in Mexico, 1915–2012)c. 1941
Head (Head of a Man)
Elizabeth Catlett (American, active in Mexico, 1915–2012) →Modernism20th Centurysculpturefigure
Date
c. 1941
Medium
Limestone
Dimensions
34.3 × 24.1 × 18.4 cm (13 1/2 × 9 1/2 × 7 1/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Roger and J. Peter McCormick and Jane and Morris Weeden endowment funds; Arts of the Americas Discretionary Fund
Elizabeth Catlett lived in Chicago in 1941, during which time she enrolled in a ceramics course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied lithography at the South Side Community Art Center. She also later recalled working on a stone carving, possibly this work. Carved from Indiana limestone, it displays a naturalistic approach to form and a keen attention to individual subjectivity. It demonstrates the subtle stylization Catlett had learned from her studies with the painter Grant Wood at the University of Iowa, but without the greater embrace of abstraction that she would develop in 1942 after studying African art.
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