?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
ELIZABETH CATLETT (1915 - 2012) Mother and Child.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1944. 203x152 mm; 8x6 inches, full margins. Edition of 30. Inscribed "E. Catlett", "30/prints" titled and dated "'46" in pencil by Charles White, lower margin.
This print is curiously inscribed by the artist's husband at the time, and not by Catlett. It is dated 1946, the year of their divorce, and not 1944, the year the print was created. White inscribed this impression in his distinctive capital script; the erased letters "CHAR" can be seen under Catlett's name.
This beautiful print is a very scarce and early example of the artist's work in lithography. Elizabeth Catlett's first foray into printmaking was during 1944-45 when she studied lithography with Harry Sternberg at the Art Students League in New York. Catlett explored the imagery of a mother and child beginning with her limestone sculpture Negro Mother and Childthat she made for her MFA thesis at the University of Iowa in 1940. Another lithograph from the New York period is Negro Woman, 1945 which shows her growing interest in developing a sense of African-American identity.
This is only the second impression of this print to come to auction; other impressions are in the estate of the artist and the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Herzog p. 42; Messinger p. 58.
