Corita Kent: Artist's 96th birthday celebrated with Google doodle

Sister Corita Kent took on the political and religious establishments in her work

Google Doodle celebrates Corita Kent's 96th birthday (Google)

Corita Kent, the American pop artist known for her vibrant serigraph prints in which she took on the political and religious establishments, all the while practicing as a nun, would have been 96 today.

Google is celebrating Sister Corita’s birthday with a Doodle in the US, in which the Google logo has been redone in the artist’s pop art style. Alongside it, a quote from Ms Corita reads: “To understand is to stand under which is to look up to which is a good way to understand.”

Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1918, Ms Kent took the name Sister Mary Corita when she joined the Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles in 1936.

Ms Kent began incorporating popular culture into her work in 1962, and her screen prints began to include slogans from American brands and advertising slogans, alongside texts from scripture, newspaper clippings, song lyrics, or excerpts from writers such as Gertrude Stein, and Albert Camus.

Ms Kent ran the Immaculate Heart College’s art department until 1968 when she left the order and moved to Boston to concentrate on her artwork, which became more spiritual and introspective as she got older, and she actively took work for social causes, creating posters for Amnesty International, among others.

She died on September 1986 after a battle with cancer.