Black Female Sculptors:
Shaping Their World With Their Hands and Hammer
This site features the works and lives of Selma Burke, Edmonia Lewis, and Elizabeth Catlett.
Selma Burke
(1900-1955)
Born: Mooresville, North Carolina
Education: Columbia University, New York, U.S.A.
Achievements/Works: Founder of the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pearl S. Buck Foundation Woman's Award (1987) for her "amazing devotion to humanity and her family".. Most noted for her relief sculpture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as seen on the dime, Jim, Falling Angel, and Peace.
The U.S. Dime (Left)
"Together" 1975/cast 2001- Bronze (Right)
Edmonia Lewis
(1845-1909)
Born: Greenbush of Rensselaer County, New York, U.S.A.
Education: Oberlin College, Ohio
Achievements/Works: Forever Free (1867-1868), Bust of John Brown ((1876), Hagar (1869), Hygieia (1874), Asleep (1874), Awake (1874), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1869), The Old Indian Arrowmaker and His Daughter (1872), The Death of Cleopatra (1875), Poor Cupid, Young Octavian
Death of Cleopatra (1876) Left
Forever Free (1867) Right
Elizabeth Catlett
(1915-)
Born: Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
Education: Howard University, State University of Iowa
Achievements/Works: Won American Negro Exhibition in Chicago (1940) for master's thesis "Mother and Child". Sharecropper (1970),Pensive (1946), Negro Es Bello (1968), Malcolm Speaks to Us (1969), Singing Head (1970), Homage to My Young Black Sisters (1968).
Female Torso (1998)
Homage to Black Women Poets (1984)
To Poem: "Hands of An African Sculpture"
