Cast bronze, with a polished rose gold patina, mounted on a marble base, 1982. Approximately 330x254x165 mm; 22x4 1/2x3 inches (not including the base). Number 1 from an edition of 9. Initialed and dated at the rear base edge.
Provenance: gift from the artist, Max Roach, New York (1998); thence by descent, the estate of Max Roach, New Jersey. With a copy of a hand-signed letter from Elizabeth Catlett confirming the title and edition and stating it was "a present to acknowledge his grand contribution to the music of the United States of America and...to the World."
Maria is a beautiful and significant late-career bronze by Elizabeth Catlett. Here Catlett has created another iconic representation of a strong woman. The pose with a raised clench fist reflects both a defiance and strength, and incorporates many long-standing themes of political and social consciousness in her practice. The composition recalls both her iconic 1968 mahogany figure Homage to My Young Black Sisters and the fluting of the dress in her 1964 bronze Woman. The artist made a related bronze figure The Protestor in 1981 of a woman raising two fists, and a larger version of the same subject in mahogany in 1984 entitled Homage to Black Woman Poets, now in the collection of the SCAD Museum of Art. In her introduction to the catalogue of Elizabeth Catlett: Sculpture: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, Lowry Stokes Sims described the universal appeal of these figures: "the effectiveness of images such asHomage to My Young Black Sisters speakes eloquently to Catlett's ability to create an inextricable combination of technique, form and subject matter that resonates powerfully to a wide-ranging audience". Brenson/Gedeon/Sims p. 23.
