Corita Kent (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. At age 18, she entered the religious order Immaculate Heart of Mary. After teaching art at Immaculate Heart College for many years, she became the chair of the art department in 1964. While her first prints consisted of dense, figurative compositions with religious themes and iconography, by 1962 her work evolved into a singular mode of Pop art. Reflecting a wide breadth of disciplinary interests, her bright compositions were not limited to the staple imagery and language of consumer and mass culture but also integrated philosophy, literature, street signage, scripture, and song lyrics in bold text and abstract forms.
Throughout the ‘60s, her work became increasingly political, urging viewers to consider poverty, racism, and social injustice. In 1968, she sought dispensation from her vows and moved to Boston following mounting pressure from the conservative Archdiocese of Los Angeles, as well as exhaustion from her increasingly public profile. After 1970, her work evolved into a sparser, introspective style, influenced by living in a new environment, a secular life, and her battles with cancer. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986. At the time of her death, she had created almost 800 screenprint editions, thousands of watercolors, and innumerable public and private commissions.
Corita Kent’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; mumok, Vienna; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Frac Ile-de-France, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, among others. Notable exhibitions include: Corita Kent: Get With The Action, Ditchling Museum of Art+Craft, Ditchling, England (2019); Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (2015); Someday is Now, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2013); People Like Us: Prints from the 1960s by Sister Corita, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany (2007).
Collège des Bernardins presents "Corita Kent. La révolution joyeuse", the first solo show in France dedicated to american artist Corita Kent (1918-1986) known as Sister Mary Corita.
The Dicastery for Culture and Education is taking part, as a Promoting Body of the Holy See Pavilion, in the 60th International Art Exhibition – The Venice Biennale, which this year will be curated by Adriano Pedrosa, entitled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere”. The Pavilion is dedicated to the theme of human rights and the figure of the least, tenants of marginalized worlds, where are eyes rarely arrive. It is intended to promote the building of a culture of encounter, a central pivot of Pope Francis’ Magisterium. This desire gives rise to intertwining stories that may often seem alien to us, but which in reality concern us all, because they tell of the same hunger for love, the same desire for life, for affection, the same restlessness for meaning, everything that art has always sought to reflect and represent.
“Ordinary Things Will Be Signs For Us: Photographs by Corita” is the title of the new catalogue about artist Corita Kent, formerly Sister Mary Corita, edited by Julie Ault, Jason Fulford and Jordan Weitzman with a text by Olivian Cha, designed and produced by Jason Fulford.
Corita Kent was an artist, an educator, and an activist for social justice and the anti-war movement. A member of the religious order Mary of the Immaculate Heart, Corita used her faith, her distinct design sensibility, and aesthetic influences from packaging to pop art to create her unique prints that inspire attention to and action against the critical issues of her time. The selection of boldly colored text-based serigraphs are on loan from U.S. Province of the Society of St. Sulpice. We Care is presented along with the Special Collections & Archives’ exhibition of the same title, which documents the Goucher community’s participation in activism and protests throughout the college’s history.
The artist Danh Vo revisits the Nivaagaard Collection in the summer of 2022 – this time to create an exhibition featuring the visionary and iconic pop artist Sister Corita.
The Someday is now exhibition. Danh Vo presents Sister Corita follows up on the previous years’ collaborations with Danh Vo, who presents significant favorite artists from his own collection at the museum. At the exhibition, you can experience Corita’s most important works from the 1960s, which is her most innovative and productive period. There will be displayed works owned by Vo and works borrowed from other private collectors at the Nivaagaard Collection where Sister Corita’s works will be put in display in a dialogue with the museum’s own works.
On June 2nd 2021, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to approve recommendations made by the Cultural Heritage Commission (CHC) and the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee to designate 5518 Franklin Avenue— Corita Kent’s Studio—as a Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM).
kaufmann repetto is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of artist Corita Kent (b. 1918, Fort Dodge, d. 1986, Boston). Developed in collaboration with the Corita Art Center in Los Angeles, to the everyday miracle presents a retrospective view of Kent's work, bringing together over 40 prints and watercolors as well as a selection of archival materials spanning from the early 1950s until her death in 1986.
