For Catlett, art and politics were inextricable. Born in Washington, DC, she moved to Mexico City in 1946, where she joined the Taller de Gráfica Popular, an artist collective that created prints narrating the revolutionary history of the working classes in Mexico. Catlett identified with the workshop’s political message and its commitment to creating accessible imagery for the masses, and she created her own works honoring the lives of Black women in the United States, including Sharecropper, one of her best-known images. Portrayed from below and with Catlett’s characteristically dynamic linework, the woman appears as an icon of strength and resilience.

Catlett’s involvement with the Taller de Gráfica Popular made her a target of the U.S. government, which considered the group a communist front. Facing deportation from Mexico and questioning by the House Un-American Activities Committee, she applied for Mexican citizenship in 1962. In response, the State Department declared her an “undesirable alien” and barred her from reentering the United States.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)