Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) is hardly an unknown artist. Her sharecropper images, particularly a 1952 linocut of a weary worker in a wide-brimmed hat, are recognizable far beyond the art world.

In 1971, during her United States exile and the height of the Black Power Movement, Elizabeth Catlett once said, “Art for me must develop from a necessity within my people. It must answer a ...