Mary Corita Kent

Art Brokerage: Sister Mary Corita Kent American Artist: b. 1918-1986. Teacher at the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. Sister Mary Corita, once the nation's best-known nun, won fame as a serigraph artist. Sister Mary Corita Kents' bright, colorful silk-screen prints were the rage of the 1960s. She designed the United States' first "Love" postage stamp. Mary Corita Kent was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1918, then moved with her family to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1920. Two years later they moved to Los Angeles, where she grew up. She joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary there in 1938. Corita received her bachelor's degree from Immaculate Heart College in 1941, followed by a master's in art history 10 years later from the University of Southern California. Popularly known as "Sister Mary Corita," she turned to the silk-screen process in 1950. Her large compositions combine quotations, often from the Bible or modern poetry, with religious or secular images. During her career as an artist and teacher, Kent also designed greeting cards and book covers. She achieved fame in the early 1960s with her brightly colored silkscreen posters. Some of her work includes excerpts from the writings of Carl Jung, e.e. cummings, and Rainer Maria Rilke. She began adding words to her designs because, she said, "I have been nuts about words and their shape since I was very young." Listings wanted.