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Glory

Maker Elizabeth Catlett (b. 1915, Washington, District of Columbia – d. 2012, Cuernavaca, Mexico)

Date1981

GeographyUnited States, North and Central America

MediumCast bronze with black patina on a wooden base

Dimensionsoverall: 14 in. x 9 1/2 in. x 10 in. (35.6 cm x 24.1 cm x 25.4 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds provided by Wellesley College Friends of Art

Object number2017.235

Status

On view

ProvenancePurchased 2017 at Swann Auction Galleries.

Rights© Catlett Mora Family Trust / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo creditDavis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

More Information

Object Label

A visionary, pioneering African American sculptor and printmaker, Elizabeth Catlett was the first student to earn an MFA in sculpture at the University of Iowa. Although she went on to earn great critical acclaim and widespread distinction, the activist Catlett faced racism and discrimination that prompted her move to Mexico; there, she worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP), taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), was barred by the US as an “undesirable alien,” and renounced her American citizenship for several decades. Highly prized and stylistically distinctive, her work focuses on socially-charged subjects—most often on African American women. Catlett’s Glory presents a quietly stilled and elegantly classicizing portrait of performer and educator Glory Van Scott (b. 1947). Of the nine identified casts, only this Glory has a lustrous black patina.