Harriet

"Harriet is emblematic of an important transformational period in Elizabeth Catlett’s personal and artistic development. Her sojourn to Mexico in 1946, in part, to work at the Taller de Gráfica Popular (the People's Graphic Arts Workshop or TGP), literally became the trip of a lifetime. The “leftist” artist collective helped Catlett to expand her artistic range through printmaking. Catlett’s Negro Woman print series, created at the TGP, fused female protagonists with collectivist political sympathies. She returned to this theme in images like Harriet throughout her career. Catlett felt at home during the twenty years that she at the TGP and in Mexico where she and her husband Francisco lived and worked for over forty-years.

According to various sources, Tubman was short in stature, “barely five feet tall.” However, Catlett uses strong directional lines that simulate movement and contrast to help render Tubman as a figure with an air of monumentality. Catlett also shows the tension embodied within Harriet’s figure. She is pointing forward—onward and outward (out of bondage). Viewers have a natural inclination to follow the thrust of Tubman’s outstretched arm. They are led beyond the confines of Tubman’s framed image just as her followers were led into the open expanse of freedom.

"