Corita Kent (1918-1986) was known for her innovative production techniques, teaching methods, and messages of social justice. Active in the U.S. during the turbulent mid-20th century, Corita’s body of work reflects concerns about poverty, racism, and war. Her use of bright colors and bold text was often combined with handwritten excerpts from religious works, philosophers, poets, and even pop music. Corita carefully selected words and images to deliver accessible, earnest messages about love, hope, and peace.

Corita was born Frances Elizabeth Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa and raised mainly in Los Angeles, California. Coming from a large Catholic family, Corita followed two older siblings into religious life, joining the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles shortly after completing high school. As a professor and later chair of the art department at Immaculate Heart College, she helped influence its reputation and recognizable style.

Working primarily with serigraphy, or silkscreen printing, Corita wanted her work to “infiltrate the masses” and reach the largest audience possible. Often incorporating imagery from consumer packaging, popular media, and other everyday objects, her vibrant text-based compositions would become closely aligned with the Pop Art movement. During the 60s, her images would grow increasingly political, influenced by the decade’s transformative events. By 1968, her art was enormously popular, showing in over 230 exhibitions and held in public and private collections around the world. With this increased fame also came growing criticism from Cardinal MacIntyre, the conservative archdiocese of Los Angeles. Exhausted from this conflict and a frenetic schedule of exhibiting, teaching, and lecturing around the country, Corita sought dispensation from her vows and moved to Boston, Massachusetts at the age of 50.

Produced during this formative period, the exhibition presents Corita’s heroes and sheroes series – the most explicitly political body of work she produced in her lifetime. Made between 1968 and 1969, the twenty-nine prints not only respond to pressing issues such as the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and the civil rights and labor movements, they also highlight Corita’s acute awareness of how these events were framed and disseminated through mass media. Taken as a whole, the heroes and sheroes mark her striking progression as an artist and underscore the ethos that informed her life and work—a belief in the power of collective action and finding joy in the everyday.