Evening Song
Not on view
Printmaking was a vital part of White’s career. He created socially engaged lithographs as early as 1939 for the Works Progress Administration in Chicago. In 1946, White accompanied his wife, the artist Elizabeth Catlett, to Mexico City. There, they worked at the celebrated and politically progressive printshop El Taller de Gráfica Popular (the People’s Graphic Workshop). White left Mexico in 1949, and while his style moved away from angular and geometric forms, he continued to make lithographs that focused on themes of racial and social justice. Here in this dreamlike image, White divides the composition into two sections: a sensitive portrait of a child lying in bed, and below, a realistic image of a bird shown against abstract patterns.