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Preview image of work. color linoleum cut, screenprint, and woodcut  on Arches paper ,  There is a Woman in Every Color 29969

2015.61

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There is a Woman in Every Color

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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.