2015.61
There is a Woman in Every Color
Artist
Elizabeth Catlett
(Washington, DC, 1915 - 2012, Washington, DC)
Title
There is a Woman in Every Color
Creation Date
1975
Century
mid-20th century
Dimensions
22 1/4 in. x 29 15/16 in. (56.52 cm x 76.04 cm)
Object Type
print
Creation Place
North America, United States, District of Columbia
Medium and Support
color linoleum cut, screenprint, and woodcut on Arches paper
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2015.61
African American artist Elizabeth Catlett contributed to the Civil Rights Movement with politically engaged sculptures and prints. This print experiments with several techniques to capture different representations of Black women. The woman’s dignified face is rendered as both positive and negative, perhaps suggesting a call for racial equality. Catlett’s inclusion of the multicolored women on the right references the color bar that registers color accuracy in printing. Here, it enacts an integration of the margins (or marginalized) that can be read as a metaphor for the artist’s commitments to global civil rights and equality. The colorful women suggest an accessible and intersectional movement of feminism that would call for the liberation of all women, a prescient forecast that would come into being only during the third wave of feminism in the 1990s.