Head of a Young Woman

Artist Elizabeth Catlett (American, 1915-2012)

Dateabout 1947

Dimensionsheight without base: 10 1/2 × 8 3/4 × 6 1/4 in. (26.7 × 22.2 × 15.9 cm)
height of wooden stand: 7 13/16 × 8 1/2 × 8 3/8 in. (19.8 × 21.6 × 21.3 cm)
Overall [head + base]: 17 11/16 × 8 3/4 × 8 3/8 in. (44.9 × 22.2 × 21.3 cm)

Mediumgrit-tempered clay

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LineGift of Florence Scott Libbey, by exchange

Object number

2006.145

Not on View

Label TextIn 1946, with a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation, Elizabeth Catlett moved from her home in Washington, DC, to Mexico City, where she spent most of her career. Head of a Young Woman elegantly expresses her abiding interest in representing the figure in a straightforward, powerful manner. This sculpture’s stylization and simplification reflect both the prevailing Modernist aesthetic and Catlett’s own interest in the human figure in African art and the pre-Columbian art of Mexico. Throughout her long career Catlett, the granddaughter of former slaves, used her art to address injustices, tackling controversial issues like lynching and racially motivated violence, the C.I.A.’s involvement in Central America, and Mexico’s discrimination against its Indigenous peoples. In both sculpture and printmaking, she also celebrated famous forebears in African American history and unsung people of color—her family and friends, laborers, the poor, and the oppressed. It is these ordinary people and their struggles and dreams in whom she found the most beauty and inspiration, as revealed in this striking portrait that is at once personal, poignant, and universal.Published ReferencesToledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 323, repr. (col.).

Haygood, Wil. I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100, Columbus, Rizzoli/Columbus Museum of Art, 2018, repr. 138.

Exhibition HistoryToledo, Toledo Museum of Art, Speaking Out: The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, June 15 - September 23, 2007.

Columbus, Columbus Museum of Art, I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100, Oct. 19, 2018-Jan. 20, 2019.

Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Museum; Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art; Chicago, IL, Art Institute of Chicago [only shown at Brooklyn and DC venues], Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies, Sept. 13, 2024 - Jan. 4, 2026.