Corita Kent

American artist and designer

Corita Kent (November 20, 1918 – September 18, 1986), born Frances Elizabeth Kent and also known as Sister Mary Corita Kent, was an American artist, designer and educator, and former religious sister. Key themes in her work included Christianity, and social justice. She was also a teacher at the Immaculate Heart College. Corita was born Frances Elizabeth Kent on November 20 in the year of 1918. At 18 years of age Kent entered the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, which were known to be very progressive and welcomed creativity. Frances joined a teaching order, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. Initially she taught young children on an Inuit Reservation in British Columbia until returning to Los Angeles to study for her bachelor's degree at Immaculate Heart College and her master's degree at University of Southern California. She was the head of the art department at Immaculate Heart College. Kent's primary medium was screen printing, also known as Serigraphy. She became self taught after she sent away for a DIY silk screening kit. Her innovative methods pushed back the limitations of two dimensional media of the times. Kent's emphasis on printing was partially due to her wish for democratic outreach, as she wished for affordable art for the masses. Her artwork, with its messages of love and peace, was particularly popular during the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Due to opposition from Cardinal James McIntyre (who had a particular dislike for Kent), the sisters would eventually be forced out of their schools in Los Angeles—with the exception of the college—and most of the sisters left the order entirely, while keeping the larger school. Kent, however, would move to the East Coast and begin to work independently. After a cancer diagnosis in the early 1970s, she entered an extremely prolific period in her career, including the Rainbow Swash design on the LNG storage tank in Boston, and the 1985 version of the United States Postal Service's special Love stamp. In recent years, Corita has gained increased recognition for her role in the pop art movement. Critics and theorists previously failed to count her work as part of any mainstream "canon," but in the last few years there has been a resurgence of attention given to Kent. As both a nun and a woman making art in the twentieth century, she was in many ways cast to the margins of the different movements she was a part of. Corita's art was her activism, and her spiritually informed social commentary promoted love and tolerance.

Frances Elizabeth Kent, fifth child of Robert Vincent and Edith Genevieve, was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1918. Kent's parents were artistically inclined, especially her father, and always encouraged her art. In junior high, Corita and her siblings attended Blessed Sacrament School which was partially staffed by Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When attending junior high, Kent's art potential was noticed by several nuns. Kent graduated from Los Angeles Catholic Girls' High School in 1936. She taught in the Immaculate Heart College and became the chair of its art department in 1964. Kent credited Charles Eames, Buckminster Fuller, and art historian Dr. Alois Schardt for their important roles in her intellectual and artistic growth. By the early 1950s, she had such a unique and well known aesthetic and teaching style that clergy members from all over the country were sent to be educated at Immaculate Heart College. Her students were drawn to her selflessness and unique teaching methods such as large class assignments like asking students to create 200 drawings or take three hours to draw their arm without looking at what they were creating. Kent toured widely the following decade. After the Second Vatican Council, Kent transformed Immaculate Heart College's annual Mary's Day procession into a community celebration which was part of the sister's campaign to bring secular people together. During this time, Kent's work became increasingly political, addressing events such as the Vietnam War and humanitarian crises. For example, she was commissioned by the Physicians for Social Responsibility to create what she called "we can create life without war" billboards. Due to this, Kent returned to secular life in 1968 as Corita Kent. Most sisters followed suit and the Immaculate Heart College closed in 1980. Corita Kent also embraced the many different revolutionary movements going on in the world at this time. These movements included the anti Vietnam War movement, Civil Rights, and Women's Rights. Kent created several hundred serigraph designs, for posters, book covers, and murals. Her work includes the 1985 United States Postal Service stamp Love and the 1971 Rainbow Swash, the largest copyrighted work of art in the world, covering a 150 feet (46 m) high natural gas tank in Boston. She did not attend the unveiling of the Love stamp because she wanted it to happen at the United Nations and was not happy with the message that was sent when the design was unveiled on the Love Boat.

Corita Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1974. After this diagnosis, in the Back Bay of Boston, Kent confined her art to water color painting and only pursued printmaking in order to say something substantiative. The Papers of Corita revealed Kent had kept two calendars towards the end of her life. This displayed that Kent, in the midst of fighting cancer, followed a strict diet, answered and wrote letters, and wanted to live and continue to create art.

Corita Kent worked at the intersection of several powerful—and at times contradictory—cultural, political, and religious influences. Corita Kent, inspired by the works of Andy Warhol, began using popular culture as raw material for her work in 1962. E. E. Cummings was one of Kent's earliest and strongest influences. She quotes him in her work separately more than a dozen times and was inspired by a line from one of his lectures to create an entire series of alphabet prints. Corita's earliest work was mostly iconographic, drawing inspiration and material from the Bible and other religious sources. Her style is heavily text based, with scripture passages or positive quotes often encompassing entire compositions with bold and highly saturated typefaces. Despite the often surreal or disorienting compositions of her works, her pieces are "always about something." Her work itself aided in the Vatican II movement, a movement to modernize and make relevant the Catholic Church. Kent's use of English church texts in her work, for example, made an impact on the Vatican II's efforts to normalize conducting Mass in English. Because of her strongly political art, she and others left their order to create the Immaculate Heart Community in 1970 to avoid problems with their archdiocese. Unsurprisingly, a Christian subtext does underscore several of her artworks, but not all, which are open to interpretation. Her collages took popular images, often with twisted or reversed words, to comment on the political unrest of the period, many of which could have been found at any number of marches or demonstrations, some of which she attended herself. Recent solo exhibitions of Kent's work include Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and There Will Be New Rules Next Week at Dundee Contemporary Arts. The Corita Art Center, a gallery and archive dedicated to preserving and promoting the work and spirit of Corita Kent, was originally founded as the Corita Prints in 1969 in North Hollywood. It changed its name when it moved to the Immaculate Heart property in 1997 and is located within the offices of the Immaculate Heart Community Headquarters in Hollywood, CA. Corita Kent received the American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal in 2016. In 2023 the Catticus Corporation was granted $700,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce a documentary, titled "You Should Never Blink", about the rebellious life of the “pop art nun” Corita Kent.