The spring exhibition at the La Salle University Art Museum will highlight Elizabeth Catlett, an African American/Mexican artist who used her work to address themes of social justice.

Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012), El Derecho al Pan (The Right to Eat), 1954, Lithograph, Collection of La Salle University Art Museum, Art ©Catlett Mora Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Featuring 24 prints, mixed media, and sculptures, the exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: Art for Social Justice will be on view in the Art Museum through June 5, 2015. Many of the artworks illustrate Catlett’s concern for equal rights for African Americans as well as indigenous Mexicans; affirm lack identity, motherhood, and family; and celebrate a future of miscegenation and racial harmony. Some also address the rights of all humans to have access to basic needs such as food and literacy.

The exhibition includes eight fine art prints from the collection of La Salle University Art Museum and 16 artworks on loan from private collectors, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Sragow Gallery in New York, and Hampton University Museum in Virginia.

The exhibition will present a contextual overview of Catlett’s progression as an artist, encompassing her work in Harlem in the early 1940s, her famous Negro Woman series of 1946–1947, her prints of indigenous Mexicans in the 1950s and 1960s, her black power prints and sculptures of the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond, and her colorful prints of the 1990s and 2000s. Visitors will learn about Catlett’s life journey and her dedication to promoting social justice for oppressed minorities.

For further information on this exhibition and the Art Museum, call 215.951.1221 or visit lasalle.edu/museum.