Corita Kent

Sister Corita Kent (1918–1986) was among the most important American graphic artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Teaching at Immaculate Heart College (IHC) in Los Angeles, she developed a unique, spiritually uplifting version of Pop art, making poetic visual statements out of the flashy fonts, eye-catching colors, and upbeat language of billboard slogans, street signs, magazine ads, and cereal box logos.

Growing up in a staunchly Catholic, lower-middle class family, Frances Elizabeth Corita Kent joined the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary after high school. She received her BA from IHC and soon began teaching there while pursuing her MA at the University of Southern California. At IHC she helped make the art department one of the most advanced in the country, and from the outset of her career, her printmaking received prizes and critical acclaim.

In 1963, Kent began introducing elements from advertising and signage into her prints. Like emerging Pop artists such as Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol, Kent sought inspiration from the commercial art world. When her prints became widely known in the mid-1960s, her radical re-interpretations of traditional religious iconography irritated the conservative Cardinal McIntyre of the Los Angeles diocese. Disturbed by this, Kent decided to leave the church and Los Angeles in 1968. She moved to Boston, where she continued making prints and watercolors until the end of her life.