The National Gallery of Art Library acquired the Schwitters-Steinitz Collection in 1976. The archive of printed and manuscript material on the twentieth-century artist and writer Kurt Schwitters was brought together by Kate Traumann Steinitz, who was a close friend of Schwitters from 1918 unitl his death in 1948. Her collection is a colorful, eclectic mixture, assembled over a period of fifty years and including hundreds of photographs, scrapbooks, musical scores, slides, drafts of books, plays, poems and articles, a phonograph record, personal letters, and even a purple silk banner with silver embroidersy. Such a melange reflects the restless energy and unconventionality of both the collections creator and its subject. The Schwitters-Steinitz Collection contains a surprising array of collaborative works by Schwitters and Steinitz. Schwitters' work has been amply documented. The collection demonstrates that Kate Steinitz was also an artist of considerable talent and that she and Schwitters successfully worked together between 1924 and 1928 in Hannover, Germany, where Schwitters was born in l887 and Steinitz lived from 1918 to 1936. During those five years they produced three children's books, songs, plays and poems for two festivals, and an opera libretto. They also founded a publishing company called Apossverlag. In 1936 Kate Steinitz left Hannover for New york City after having been told by government authorities that she could no longer write for German publications (she had published about 150 articles in various German newspapers and periodicals.) The following year, works by Schwitters were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition sponsored by the Nazi Third Reich, and Schwitters emigrated to Lysaker, near Oslo, Norway. With the death of her husband in 1942, Seinitz moved to California to be near her two married daughters. Shortly thereafter she began work as a liberarian for the Elmber Belt Library of Vinciana in Los Angleles, which would occupty her professionally for the rest of her life. Schwitters fled the Nazis again in 1940 when Normway fell, and he crossed the Channel to England. Correspondence between the two friends lasted through the war years and beyond and reveals that the collaborative energy between them continued. Schwitters died in in England in 1948. Steinitz lived another 27 years and died in Los Angeles in 1975. The exhibition focuses on the collaborative efforts of Steinitz and Schwitters as documented by materials in the Schwitters-Steinitz Collection. Part of the commentary is in the words of Kate Steinitz herself from her 1968 biography Kurt Schwiters, a Portrait from Life, published by the University of California Press (cat.38). This book, translated from the German and written in an affedtionate, engaging style, is full of humoroius reminiscences and anecdotes that are invaluable in understanding the collection that she formed. All quotations cited in this exhibition are from her biography of Schwitters. All objects in this exhibion are part of the Schwitters-Steinitz Collection unless otherwise indicated. The Schwitters-Steinitz Collection offers a diverse and fascinating selection of materials on the artist Kurt Schwitters. By focusing on Kate Steinitz as an artist and writer rather than as a distinguished librarian, the collection also provieds new insight into her accomplishments. As demonstrated by this exhibition, the collection is expecfially rich in its documentation of friendship and artistic collaboration between Steinitz and Schwitters. it is fitting to give Kate Steinitz the last word:
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