Head (Head of a Man)

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.