In 1985, a stamp designed by Corita Kent sold over 700 million copies through the United States Postal Service, making her Love stamp one of the most widely distributed works of art in American history. Kent was a former Roman Catholic nun turned full-time artist whose career moved between the convent classroom and the public street, from serigraph prints that mixed advertising imagery with antiwar sentiment to a gas storage tank in Boston painted in sweeping arcs of color that became the largest copyrighted work of art in the world.
Frances Elizabeth Kent was born in 1918 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In 1936 she entered the Roman Catholic order of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. She remained a member of that order for thirty-two years, during which time her religious community became the central context for her education, her teaching, and the development of her artistic practice.
In 1947 Kent joined the art department faculty at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. Over the following two decades she built the department into an environment that drew prominent outside figures, including designer duo Charles and Ray Eames and architect and theorist Buckminster Fuller, both of whom lectured at the college and contributed to the intellectual atmosphere Kent cultivated. In 1964 she became chair of the art department. During the 1960s she produced serigraph prints that combined the visual language of commercial advertising with social and political commentary, work that placed her within the broader currents of Pop Art while also reflecting her engagement with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Her progressive approach drew opposition from Cardinal James McIntyre, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, who objected to her artwork and to the direction of the Immaculate Heart Community more broadly. The Los Angeles Times named her Woman of the Year in 1966, and Newsweek featured her on its cover in 1967.
In 1968 Kent left the Immaculate Heart of Mary order and moved to Boston, where she pursued her artistic career independently. In 1971 she created the Rainbow Swash for the Boston Gas Company, painting the South Boston LNG tank in bold diagonal bands of color. The work was recognized as the largest copyrighted work of art in the world. In 1985 the United States Postal Service issued her Love stamp, which sold over 700 million copies. Kent died in 1986.
Kent's influence extended across art, education, graphic design, and social justice. Artists including Lari Pittman, Pae White, Mike Kelley, and Ciara Phillips have been counted among those shaped by her example, and her ten rules for students and teachers, developed during her years at Immaculate Heart College, have continued to circulate among educators and artists decades after her death. In 2015 Boston designated a Corita Kent Day, and Los Angeles followed with its own in 2018. The American Institute of Graphic Arts awarded her its medal posthumously in 2016. The Rainbow Swash remains a visible landmark in Boston, and the Love stamp stands as a measure of how far her work reached into everyday American life.
