Young Douglass

Elizabeth Catlett was an African American sculptor, printmaker, and art educator. She earned a degree in 1935 at Howard University and was the first person to earn an MFA in sculpture at the University of Iowa. Catlett developed an expressionistic style of printmaking that highlights the strength and dignity of her subjects. “Young Douglass” is a youthful portrait of Frederick Douglass, the highly influential American abolitionist, orator, writer, and social reformer, who escaped enslavement in 1838. Produced late in Catlett’s career, the linoleum cut features the signature graphic style she developed in her relief prints, characterized by the use of white, parallel hatch marks to model forms within fields of black ink.