The following information is from the Corita Art Center web site.
Frances Kent was born in 1918 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She grew up in
Los Angeles and joined the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in
1936, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. She graduated from
Immaculate Heart College in 1941 and then taught grade school in
British Columbia. In 1946 she returned to Immaculate Heart College
to teach art. In 1951, she received a master’s degree in art history
from the University of Southern California; it is also the year she
exhibited her first silkscreen print. Corita’s earliest works were
largely iconographic; known as "neo-gothic" they borrowed phrases
and depicted images from the Bible. By the 1960s, she was using
popular culture (such as song lyrics and advertising slogans) as raw
material for her meaning-filled bursts of text and color. Corita’s
cries for peace in the era of Vietnam were not always welcome. In
1965 her "Peace on Earth" Christmas exhibit in IBM’s New York show
room was seen as too subversive and Corita had to amend it. However,
her work continued to be an outlet for Corita’s activism—in her. By
then Corita was the chairman of the famous Immaculate Heart College
Art Department. Buckminster Fuller described his visit to the
department as "among the most fundamentally inspiring experiences of
my life." Other influential friends of hers included Charles Eames ,
Ben Shahn, Harvey Cox and the Berrigan brothers. In 1968 Corita
decided to devote herself
entirely to
making art. She left the Order and Los Angeles, and moved to
Boston’s Back Bay. She made numerous commissioned works
(Westinghouse Group W ads, book covers and murals) and continued to
create her own serigraphs in the next 18 years. Corita remained
active in social causes and designed posters and billboards for
Share, the International Walk for Hunger, Physicians for Social
Responsibility and Amnesty International. The Boston Gas tank on the
Southeast Expressway still bears her famous 150-foot rainbow swash,
which is a similar to her design for the 1985 Love Stamp. On Sept.
18, 1986 Corita finally lost her battle with cancer and died in her
home.