About this artwork
Elizabeth Catlett made this sculpture early in her career, just after a formative period in Chicago. Its angular features and deep carvings demonstrate Catlett’s confident abstraction of the human form. She was inspired by African art, which she saw as the precursor to modernist abstraction; “After all,” she said, “abstraction was born in Africa.” Catlett continued to build on these formal qualities through sculptures, prints, and paintings, developing an expressive, modern aesthetic to depict African American subjects.
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Status
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On loan to Brooklyn Museum in New York City for Elizabeth Catlett: "A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies"
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Department
- Arts of the Americas
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Artist
- Elizabeth Catlett
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Title
- Head (Head of a Man)
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1943
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Medium
- Limestone
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Inscriptions
- Signed verso, bottom-left edge, incised: "EC".
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Dimensions
- 34.3 × 24.1 × 18.4 cm (13 1/2 × 9 1/2 × 7 1/4 in.)
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Credit Line
- Roger and J. Peter McCormick and Jane and Morris Weeden endowment funds; Arts of the Americas Discretionary Fund
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Reference Number
- 2021.413