“Sister” Corita Kent
Corita Kent, ( 1918-1986 ) was born Elizabeth Kent in Iowa but was always known as Sister Mary Corita Kent.
Kent was born into a Catholic family who decided to move to California when she was 5 years old.
She became a nun when she was 18, joining the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart College, where she stayed for 30 years.
In addition to the convent, the campus included a private school and a college where all kinds of subjects were taught.
It was at this school that Corita began as an artist, studying both Fine Arts and Art History.
During her years at the IHC, she spent most of her time as a professor.
Kent always maintained an advanced point of view for the time, with a vision of the future.
Her classes were attended by many students who later became important designers and artists, and she was friends with the Eames couple, Alfred Hitchcock and John Cage.
His classes became very popular and students came from all over the world to take his classes.
His way of inspiring students was not to use the great artistic currents as examples, but rather to use the language of the people in order to transform society, to be critical and to act.
He elaborated the “Ten rules for students and teachers” and proposed a new way of looking and observing the world through his “discoverer” which could be a 35 mm slide frame or a cardboard square with a cut-out window: “It is a device that does exactly the same as the lens or the viewfinder of the camera: it helps to take things out of their context, allows us to see by the mere fact of looking and increases our ability to observe quickly and to make decisions”.
Corita created her works on paper with the silkscreen technique, using bright colors and attention-grabbing messages inspired by advertising language, an easy-to-understand style with the idea of reaching as many people as possible.
He spread passages from the Bible as colorful anti-war slogans, and organized artistic celebrations of a social nature.
In 1967 she appeared on the cover of Newsweek with the headline “The nun becomes modern”.
That same year, the high ecclesiastical spheres of Los Angeles “forced” her to leave the order, and she and 90% of the nuns of the congregation, encouraged by the superior Anita Caspary, followed Corita’s example and hung up their habits.
Corita Kent moved to Boston to pursue her artistic career.
She continued to develop and gain the admiration of the art world, although her name did not become as popular outside the intellectual circle as, for example, Andy Warhol.
In 1974 she was diagnosed with cancer.
The illness and the change her life had undergone made her work, without losing color, become calmer.
The inspirations no longer came so much from pop culture, but from nature, which became her source of inspiration.
His most important creations of this new phase are two: On the one hand, the decoration of the Keyspan warehouse in Boston, which he painted white with large brushstrokes of rainbow-like colors (Rainbow Swash, 1971).
And on the other, the stamp she created for the Love collection of the U.S. Postal Service in 1985.
Corita Kent died in 1986 in Boston.
Today, her work can be seen in contemporary art museums such as MoMA and the Met, as well as in her own museum in Los Angeles.
The messages she was trying to convey about hope and love are still messages that people want to hear,” says the director of the Corita Art Center. “Our society is arguably as chaotic as the 1960s when she was making these prints, so people still need her work.
And I think that’s still as relevant today as it was 40 or 50 years ago.”
