The papers of artist, collector, librarian, and scholar Kate Steinitz measure 4.3 linear feet and date from circa 1910 to 2002. The collection documents Steinitz's life and career in Germany and the United States through biographical material; correspondence; writings, including manuscripts and travel diaries; exhibition files; personal business records; printed material; travel scrapbooks; artwork; and photographs.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of artist, collector, librarian, and scholar Kate Steinitz measure 4.3 linear feet and date from circa 1910 to 2002. The collection documents Steinitz's life and career in Germany and the United States through biographical material; correspondence; writings, including manuscripts and travel diaries; exhibition files; personal business records; printed material; travel scrapbooks; artwork; and photographs.
Biographical material consists of life and travel documents, various membership cards, news clippings, and memorial cards. Also included are letters of recommendation, a resume, and an award from the president of Germany.
Correspondence is with friends, family, colleagues, and various organizations. Artists represented include Carrie van Biema, El Lissitzky, Piet Mondrian, and others. Correspondence with arts organizations include San Francisco Museum of Art, Berlinische Galerie, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, and others.
Published writings by Steinitz include articles, books, and book reviews. Unpublished writings include two travel diaries and an illustrated journal, an autobiographical essay with a sketch of the Traumann family tree, manuscripts, lectures, poems, and notes. Writings by others include a guest register with sketches and comments by visitors, a memorial speech, biographical essays, and miscellaneous notes.
Steinitz's professional activities during her career as a librarian and curator of the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana are documented through published articles and books, informal reports, correspondence, scrapbooks, sketches, and photographs.
Files pertaining to exhibitions of Steinitz's artwork and collection are documented through three exhibition catalogs, correspondence, inventories, photographs, and printed ephemera. Materials related to the Schwitters-Steinitz Collection, which was compiled by Steinitz and is available at the National Gallery of Art Library in Washington, D.C., include a finding aid and photocopies documenting the exhibition Collaborative Works by Kate Steinitz and Kurt Schwitters from the Schwitters-Steinitz Collection (1994).
Personal business records include an appraisal of Steinitz's art and book collection. Documents pertaining to Steinitz's publishing activities include sales agreements and legal services rendered for the book Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life (1968) written by Steinitz and contracts with Whitman Publishing Company for a children's book by Tom Seidmann-Freud.
Printed material consists of published illustrations and stationary by Steinitz; clippings about Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, and others; reproductions of artwork; and miscellaneous invitations and announcements. Also found are three children's books written and illustrated by Tom Seidmann-Freud and a book of poems with an illustrated book jacket by Joachin Ringelnatz.
Steinitz's personal and professional trips to Europe are documented through six travel scrapbooks which include sketches, photographs, notes, and printed ephemera such as postcards, receipts, and maps.
Artwork by Steinitz consists of travel sketches and a mock-up sketch for the book Manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci: Their History, With a Description of the Manuscript Editions in Facsimile (1948). Artwork by others includes miscellaneous sketches, prints, and paintings. Of note are greeting cards with prints by Werner Graeff and a collage by Otto Nebel.
Photographs and negatives consist of portraits and snapshots of Steinitz as well as family, friends, and artists. Photographs by Steinitz include a self-portrait and images of artists, artwork, and Bauhaus architecture. Photographs of Steinitz's apartments in Los Angeles include images of a Man Ray table that was given to Jake Zeitlin. Artists represented include Piet Mondrian, Naum Gabo, Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Höch, El Lissitzky, Marc Chagall, George Grosz, and others.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 10 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1915-1976 (Box 1; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1922-1998 (Boxes 1-2; 0.9 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1921-2002 (Box 2; 1.0 linear feet)
Series 4: Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana, 1948-1989 (Boxes 2-3; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 5: Exhibition Files, 1939-2001 (Box 3; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 6: Personal Business Records, 1938-1993 (Box 3; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 7: Printed Material, 1913-2002 (Boxes 3-5; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 8: Travel Scrapbooks, 1966-1974 (Box 4; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 9: Artwork, circa 1928-1974 ( Boxes 4-5; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 10: Photographic Material, circa 1910-1979 (Boxes 4-5; 0.3 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Kate Steinitz (1889-1975) was an artist, collector, librarian, and scholar who worked in Berlin and Hanover, Germany and Los Angeles, California. Steinitz was born in Beuthen, Silesia, Germany, (now Poland) to Arnold and Magdelena Traumann; the family relocated to Berlin in 1899. From 1908 to 1911, Steinitz studied drawing and painting under Käthe Kollwitz and Lovis Corinth and attended lectures by art historian, Heinrich Wölfflin. While visiting Paris with her mother in 1912, Steinitz continued her studies at the Sorbonne and Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
Steinitz married physician, Ernst Steinitz in 1913. The couple had three daughters including Ilse, Lotti, and Beate. In 1917, the family moved to Hanover, Germany. Over the next 17 years, the Steinitz household served as a salon for visiting artists including Naum Gabo, Hannah Höch, El Lissitzky, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Visitors' notes and drawings from this era are documented in Steinitz's guestbook, Zu Gast bei Kate Steinitz, published by Galerie Gmurzynska in 1977.
Steinitz was most active as a fine artist while living in Hanover. Her paintings under glass were first exhibited in 1921 at Herbert von Garvens' gallery. Steinitz had her first solo exhibition in 1922 at the Gurlitt Gallery in Berlin. In 1926, her work was included in the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.
Steinitz also collected art and her collection included artworks by El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Auguste Rodin, Otto Nebel, Franz Marc, and others. In 1925, she collaborated with German artist Kurt Schwitters and Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg on Die Scheuche Märchen, a typographic children's book published by Aposs and Merz Verlag. Steinitz and Schwitters also collaborated on Der Zusammenstoss, an opera libretto. Steinitz compiled an archival collection documenting Schwitters' life and career which was later acquired by the National Gallery of Art Library in Washington, D.C. in 1976.
As a journalist, Steinitz wrote about art and lifestyle topics for newspapers and magazines in Hanover and Berlin. Growing Nazi influences caused the family to leave Germany for New York City in 1936. As Chairman of the Art Committee of Friendship House, a cultural organization for refugees, Steinitz organized the New Americans (1939-1940) exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by European refugees at the World's Fair in New York.
After finalizing her U.S. citizenship in 1944, Steinitz relocated to Los Angeles where she resided for the remainder of her life. From 1945 to 1961, she served as a librarian for Elmer Belt's Leonardo da Vinci library. When Belt donated the library to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1961, Steinitz was named honorary curator of the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana. In 1969, Steinitz's literary contributions on Leonardo da Vinci earned her an invitation to deliver the lecture for the IX Lettura Vinciana in Venice, Italy.
The biographical information included here draws upon the following sources: Wilson Library Bulletin, Vol. 45 (1970) and Kate Steinitz: Art into Life into Art, exhibition catalog, Severin Wunderman Museum (1994).
Related Materials:
Kate Steinitz compiled a collection of archival materials about German artist and writer Kurt Schwitters and donated the materials to the National Gallery of Art Library located in Washington, D.C.
Kate Traumann Steinitz papers are also located at UCLA Library Special Collections.
Provenance:
The Kate Steinitz papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in 1999 by Ilse Berg, daughter of Kate Steinitz.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
An interview of Kiff Slemmons conducted 2007 November 1-2, by Mija Riedel, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, at Slemmons' home and studio in Chicago, Illinois.
Slemmons speaks of her childhood growing up in a small town in Iowa; helping her mother in the town pharmacy; working the printing press with her dad, who published the town newspaper; taking art lessons in grade school; learning to play the piano; attending one year at Scripps College before living for a year in Paris; attending the University of Iowa majoring in French; taking basic art classes her senior year; a spring trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, with her future husband Rod; financing the trip by selling 150 pairs of earrings at the student art fair; visiting Monte Alban and being inspired by the ancient jewelry in Tomb 7; moving to Washington state; meeting Ella Steffens and doing jewelry repair work; a strong feeling of the maker's presence in work she repairs; the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi; imperfection as an attractive quality; the conscious decision made from jewelry making to art making, based more in ideas and concepts as opposed to simple decoration; series Hands of Heros, Figures of Speech; the importance of exhibiting her work as it would be seen worn as opposed to in cases under glass; the development of her breastplate pieces; the Top 10 Ethnic Hits; the layering of many meanings as well as materials in her work; her respect for the brevity of poetry and love of Emily Dickinson's work; the restraint of poetry in leaving things unsaid and her struggle to capture that essence; series Re:Pair and Imperfection coming out of her move to Chicago and the developing Iraq War; her workbench as an ever-changing sketchbook full of chaos, tension, and conversation; working with Francisco Toledo and the city of Oaxaca in developing paper jewelry; her travels to India, Africa, Mexico, and Japan; her piece Insectopedia and the great interest shown in it by entomologists; and her desire to send her work out in the world where it is seen and enjoyed. Slemmons also recalls Ramona Solberg, David LaPlantz, Leo Adams, Esther Knobel, Lloyd Herman, Dominic DiMare, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Hoch, Annette Messager, Virginia Holshuh, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Kiff Slemmons (1944- ) is a metal artist from Chicago, Illinois. Interviewer Mija Riedel is a curator and writer from San Francisco, California.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound discs. Reformatted in 2010 as 13 digital wav files. Duration is 7 hr., 19 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Topic:
Metal-workers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Jewelry makers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Three Berlin artists of the Weimar era : Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen : [exhibition] September 13 through November 5, 1994 / Galerie St. Etienne
The photomontages of Hannah Höch / organized by Maria Makela, Peter Boswell ; essays by Peter Boswell, Maria Makela, Carolyn Lanchner ; chronology by Kristin Makholm
Three Berlin artists of the Weimar Era : Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen / Louise R. Noun ; with essays by Annelie Lütgens, Maria Makela, Amy Namowitz Worthen
Collages, Hannah Höch, 1889-1978 / [exhibit organised by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart ; texts, Götz Adriani ... et al. ; English translation, Eileen Martin ; photos, Liedtke & Michel]
Hannah Höch : collages, peintures, aquarelles, gouaches, dessins : A.R.C. 2, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 30 janvier-7 mars 1976, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatl. Museen Preuss. Kulturbesitz, 24. März-9. Mai 1976 / exposition réalisée en collaboration avec le Goethe- Inst. de Paris ; [Katalog, Barbara Dieterich, Peter Krieger ; Übers., Jean- Claude Walfisz, Genoveva Dieterich]
