Lithograph on wove paper, 1945. 306x220 mm; 12x8⅝ inches, wide (full ?) margins. Proof, from an edition of approximately 20-30. Signed, titled, dated '46 and inscribed "20/PRINTS" in pencil, lower margin, by Charles White in 1946. Printed at the Art Students League, New York.
This print was inscribed later by Charles White, Catlett's husband, in his distinctive capital script. It is dated 1946, the year of their divorce, and not 1945, the year the print was created.
This important print is a striking, modernist example of the artist's early work in lithography. Catlett made two prints between 1944-45 when she studied lithography with Harry Sternberg at the Art Students League in New York, likely as part of her Rosenwald Fund fellowship. The other Catlett lithograph from this New York period is Mother and Child, 1944; similiarly inscribed by Charles White, sold by Swann on December 15, 2015. Only two other impressions of Negro Woman have come to Swann since 2007 - the last one on February 19, 2008. A signed impression numbered 1/30 in a private collection is included in the artist's traveling retrospective Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies.
