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Born April 15, 1915, in Washington, DC
Died April 2, 2012, in Cuernavaca, Mexico
Elizabeth Catlett was a distinguished sculptor and printmaker. She was one of the first three students to complete the requirements for the University of Iowa’s Master of Fine Arts degree in 1940. Catlett’s major commissions include a bronze bust of poet Phillis Wheatley for Jackson State University, a sculpture of musician Louis Armstrong for the city of New Orleans, and a bronze relief for Howard University. After receiving a Rosenwald Fellowship, she moved to Mexico in 1946, and became a Mexican citizen in 1962. Catlett was the first woman professor of sculpture in the School of Fine Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.