This is not recording.
Oh gosh, what's happening?
Okay, this is
Ablee and it is first day, August 1993.
And I am with you and be a full
name and how you know.
He'll be a guard, backer, B-A-C-H-E-R-T.
Backer, C-K-E-E-H-E.
I'm sorry.
Bacha.
Profession co-director of the gallery, Saint-E-Tien.
Chois-Bella, G-A-L.
Is it the French way?
Yes.
Galilee, Saint-E-Tien.
Saint-E-Tien.
And I'm having problems technical. Why is this thing not working?
It's work.
Okay. May I have your birthday?
Yes. I was born on April 3rd, 1921.
In Mannheim, in Mannheim, Germany.
Here, 24 West 57th Street.
New York, eighth floor. New York, New York.
1.0019.
And phone number 245-6734.
Okay. I'd like to make a note that this interview will be different, I guess, because this is the co-director of the gallery.
And not exactly, what would you say?
Not exactly following the immediate guidelines of this.
So this will be like a biographical sketch and just tell us your training, education back in Germany,
and how you got here when you came, when you became the citizen, I guess you were a citizen.
Oh, and you.
And when you came here, and what the gallery has.
Okay. That'd be nice to have.
Well, I grew up in Mannheim until I was 15.
I emigrated in August 1936 to this country.
I came with my older sister at that time.
My parents had to stay in Germany because they didn't get an affidavit.
However, they managed to obtain one with our help once we were better established here and came in 1939.
I went to high school when I arrived thanks to the financial support of the proverbial American uncle.
And when I graduated in January 1939, I had to seek employment immediately.
Even though I had a scholarship to go to Ovalon College, I could not take a vantage of it because I had no money for my support.
And so I looked for employment.
This was depression times still in the United States.
And I managed because I was already familiar with the art galleries of New York having traveled to all, you know, seen them all during my free time.
There weren't that many in those days.
And I just asked, wait for one to the next and ask if they needed an assistant.
And the gallery near and off, near and off gallery took me.
That gallery was run by Karl Neuerndorf, who had emigrated about 1934 from Cologne.
He had clays and candenskies in France Mark and the most fantastic things in his gallery and hardly any customers because this art was not well known at that time.
He managed just to skimp to get by.
And he took me for the illustrious salary of about $3 a week.
I was able to live at home.
My sister had, by that time, landed a fairly good, separatarial job and I think she was making $30 a week.
I don't think you have any idea of the value of money at that time.
The rent was for a room or five room apartment, which we had at that time on Riverside Drive and 153rd Street, was $70 a month.
Quarter milk was ten cents. The subway fare was the nickel.
$3 a week is something that didn't get me very far, but because I was living at home and we managed, it was very difficult in the beginning.
Very, very difficult. And a lot of trees were just out of the question.
Just the same Mr. Neorendorf increased my salary over time.
And when I left him in 1930, in 1940, I made $12.
And he was have increased it to 15 if I had been willing to stay.
But by that time, Otto Kalleer had arrived in this country.
He visited Neorendorf and there for I met him and I did want a change.
I learned a lot at Neorendorf. I had no prior a secretarial or other experience.
But as a boss and as a setup, it didn't suit me. It was chaotic, really.
And Kalleer seemed to be a better boss and a more organized person.
And I felt that I had more of a working relationship and it proved to be extremely correct because I'm still here.
I started at the gallery sent it in November 4, 1940.
And have been ever since Otto Kalleer died in November 1978.
At that time, his granddaughter, Jane Kalleer, had worked with us for one year.
She started in 1977. And when after Kalleer's death, Jane and I took over the direction of the gallery.
We've done that ever since.
Kalleer, you've been called director since 1978.
Yes. My role, of course, in the gallery increased as I gathered experience.
I was extremely young when I started and had little experience.
I picked up stenography on the way. I also picked up a college degree. I went to Hunter College at night.
Did you never get to Oberlin?
Never got to Oberlin. Not, it never been there even.
But I did my BA at Hunter with the Summankomlau to the degree at night.
It took me quite a long time.
And at that time, I graduated in 1954, they didn't even have an art department.
I had to sort of get my courses as I went along in humanities, it was called.
And I took a lot of anthropology and archaeology. Astronomy, geology, it was wonderful.
I got an excellent grounding in general scientific and scholarly work.
It was a very, very good education.
Did you get a scholarship to go there?
No, that was free.
College was probably free.
You want to turn this out?
He's acting a little funny, but he's working.
All right.
Okay, let's continue.
I also took a number of courses at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in anthropology,
and at the Extension course at the University of New Mexico in Santa Fe, about American Indian art and archaeology.
It was very, very interesting to me.
And I found it much more important to study something that I could see in the original,
rather than taking art courses and looking at slides.
You won't have something wrong.
Very much in column with Dr. Schvallik, that's what he does.
Yes, he studied here the collection of American.
Right. I felt that I had so much exposure to art in the gallery surroundings
and I didn't need courses.
You see my work here.
When you asked about my education, I constantly read the literature that comes in.
I read the books that are being published about the artists that we represent,
or that we are interested in, and to sit in a school room and listen to a teacher
doesn't make any sense to me anyway.
I do that in my free time.
I go to museums and I look at the things and they get a much better education.
Also handling the actual art is such a wonderful experience and such a thrill.
And you learn a lot just doing that.
Otto Kaleer was a highly educated man who also gave me an enormous background on Austrian art, particularly,
but he also did know a lot about German art.
And he also knew a lot about technique such as lithography and etching and woodcuts.
And that's very important in my field to know the difference needles to say between these media,
but much more refined differences of technique.
So I have a looked at printing presses and things like that and watched artists do etching and lithography.
And that's very important when you want to do the kind of thing you're doing.
We are also giving our staff that kind of background.
And I've taught innumerable people how to frame and map things, for instance,
and we never let any original artwork out of the house into a framers or a packers place without supervision or without most of it we do right here.
That's our policy. It's been our policy for a long time.
Do you paint yourself?
No, I don't. I have much too much respect for good painters.
I don't.
But you frame the map?
Oh yes, that we do.
Now, Arca Lear started in 1939. He started this gallery and came over with many Austrian artists' works,
such as from the 19th and 20th century, such as Valmula, for instance, who was totally unknown here.
He was 19th century and out, for an art, people like that who are still not very well known here.
And then he came with Clint's and Chilis and Kokoska's and Kubins and they were equally amazing.
You say Kokoska?
Orska Kokoska.
Orska Kokoska.
You can do either one, but Kokoska himself said Kokoska.
I think so.
That's...
Okay, I'm learning something.
However, it was very difficult to put these people on the map and it took many years.
French art was what was in demand here, even though it was depression times, it was better and easier to sell those.
Chilis also had a few sysons and one was and things like that and he managed to sell some of them.
However, he had a hard time becoming established.
He was a new man, so to speak, and it took quite a few years to establish a reputation which in the meantime has grown and flourished.
One of the things that he was interested in was to see what was going on in this country.
And he looked at a lot of American art, which he didn't particularly like because it was derivative of European art.
And he didn't find that particularly interesting until he came across the art of Ramamoses.
Someone named by the name of Calder walked in one day and showed him among other American folk art, works by this old lady and Calir said this is interesting.
And he was to say he organized her first exhibition in this gallery.
And you didn't know that in 1940 and we have represented her ever since.
And Ramamoses just took off fairly soon, not immediately either, but over the years in around 1949 she really became a celebrity.
And it was something that simply took off the public, simply loved her work possibly because of war times, hard times, people enjoyed the generally pretty pictures, but the art establishment in the beginning, while in the beginning they approved of her.
In the 50s when abstract expressionism took off, Ramamoses was a non-know.
But the public continued to like her and lots of people purchased her works and we were generally extremely successful.
We still are. The person who just walked in was looking for a Moses.
He had bought one before and he's looking for another one.
I went to Merzik.
Pleasant Billy?
Oh yes, yes. We're very familiar with that museum. In fact, we have a lot to do with that.
And we, something Otto Calir did in which belongs into the archive department.
He began very early on to register the copyright of her art so that it could be used only without permission.
That saved guards, the artist's rights, and he made an agreement with Ramamoses whereby the works that are reproduced are being paid for by the licensees.
And Ramakat, very handsome royalties and the family still does to this day.
Which is an agreement that no one that I know has ever done in such fairness and such decency.
I've heard a lot of exploitative, about exploitative contracts with artists that dealers have made and we certainly safeguarded Ramamoses' rights.
We do the same for several American artists whose work we now represent among the art speakermen who did the mouse, you know, the Holocaust series.
It's called Bethear?
Yes, we represent him.
We did his exhibition on the tomb of volumes of mouse and we represent him.
We just began a traveling exhibition series that starts at the Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
Now, the history of the gallery...
It was the name.
How is it called?
San Etienne.
Why?
That's French for Saint Stephen's.
Saint Stephen's or Stefan's dome in Vienna is the landmark of Vienna and that's where Otto Kalyer came from.
He emigrated in 1938 with his family to Switzerland but he couldn't get any working papers there and therefore established a gallery in Paris on the Rousse Foubou Saint-Onore.
And because he wanted to give it a French name, needless to say, he called it Galerysen et Etienne.
In memory of his gallery in Vienna, which by the way remained in some kind of activity until the mid-50s, he gave the gallery just gave it as a gift to his secretary at the time.
And it was called the Noia Galerysen.
And he continued it through the Nazi times and gave it back to him after he, after the Holocaust and all the nightmares that took place.
And he finally sold it but it is still in existence in the local in which it was located in Vienna and is now called Galerysen et St-Stéphane.
So in a way it even has our name.
Kalyer in the meantime had to leave, left Paris because he wanted to be reunited with his family and they all came over here in 1939 and he established what he thought would be a branch of the French gallery and therefore called it Galerysen et Etienne.
Besides French names were very fashionable at the time French art was in and so he decided to leave that name but he never went back to Paris to his gallery.
The gallery was discontinued and the inventory was put in storage.
Miraculously it survived without a blemish and in 1946 we got a big crate with clinics and chelars and cockroaches and all kinds of wonderful things in it.
It was like Christmas or Hanukkah, whatever, to celebrate.
And in the meantime Kalyer had persisted in making the Austrian artists whose merit he deeply believed better known in this country.
We did one show after another showing their works and when they were not understood we did it again.
We did the first Chila exhibition in 1941, the first Kubeen exhibition in 1941, the first Kokozka exhibition in 1940, the first Clinton exhibition as late as 1959.
It's not because we could not possibly get enough works together by 1959 enough works had come from Europe so that we could assemble a very respectable show.
We then took on the work of Kit Colvin's who had begun.
I have two firsts.
Really? Well, chief, my specialty. I have done a lot of work on it.
We're hanging on my wall in LA.
Is that right?
Yes.
Well, you're seeing three right here, two right here. They're both colds. It's an early and late one.
We specialize very much in colds and we have done 30, 40 exhibitions of her work and have been in the Kishin rush veteran on.
She was born in Königsberg, which is in East Prussia and now belongs to Poland.
But she lived in Berlin for most of her life.
And where did he pass on?
She died in 1945 in Dresden, where she had sung refuge from the Barbenz of Berlin.
And now Colwitz was an artist who never really had a time of not being popular.
During the war, these German artists like Nolden, Kirschner, you couldn't sell them for a lot of money.
German art was disdained.
But Colwitz, because of the social content of her work, didn't matter.
People didn't mind that she was German. They didn't care. She was on our side.
That was quite clear because of the content of her work.
And so during the war, we did some very successful exhibitions of Colwitz.
And then after the war, on and on, she just continued to be better known.
It is interesting too that Colwitz, we were not the first to introduce her.
We helped to continue her fame and her reputation.
But her work was shown in New York as early as the 20s.
The New York Public Library acquired works by her in I think 1912.
Very early, very interesting.
You had all this stuff in your, in this gallery, all these, it's like an archive.
Yes. For instance, what I'm telling you is the product of research, of course.
And in fact, I learned some of these things not too long ago,
because I did an article for an essay for a co-luck of a Colwitz exhibition
that took place at the National Gallery.
And they asked me to write an article on collectors and collecting of Colwitz.
And that's where I learned all these things.
And so, of course, the background and the source material of all this is right here.
We have, I should perhaps concentrate a little bit on the archives of the gallery,
because of this long history, because we have collected archival material
on all these artists and some of them I haven't even named.
We kept, we have photographs, brought us full of photographs.
And when people do, for instance, a co-luck resume on Max Lieberman,
they come to us and they found all the numbers.
The photographs, what artists do you have?
We did, this by the way, you should really, instead of me speaking all this,
this is where I would have done a little bit of research before.
I mean, I can't evoke all this.
The people that we have introduced are Lovis Korent, Max Lieberman,
Paula Mordersong Becker,
in addition to the co-luvis Korent.
Korent, that's the C-O-R-I-N-T-H.
We have done many exhibitions of his.
And so, when someone looks for photographs of anything, they just have to come to us.
We have a large print collection of works by Korent,
and also some watercolors and drawings, some are hanging in the current exhibition.
Max Lieberman was an artist whose work we introduced.
We did some exhibitions of oil paintings and of his graphic work.
We did not have any shows of his recently.
Somehow, we've grown away from his art.
One of the artists that we represented was,
who emigrated to this country, was Oigin Spiro, SPIRO.
And we have an archive of his work.
He's not as well known.
He was, however, well known in Germany.
He was the president of the Berlin Session before he was thrown out.
We introduced the art of Irma Rochstein,
R-O-T-H-S-T-E-I-N, and Irma I-R-M-A.
She was a sculptor, Austrian.
And someone in Austria is now writing a book on her.
And she was not terribly well known.
She's not outstanding like some of the other artists that I've named.
You know, these things come now in a fairly disorderly way to my mind.
Ernst Barlach is an artist whose work we show periodically.
We did by far the best Barlach exhibition ever in this country.
In 1962, I believe, with wooden sculptures,
you know, those are extremely rare and unique.
And I was recently in the Barlach Museum in Hamburg,
where I had sort of a reunion with some of the works that were in our show.
We show his woodcuts and lithoplasms works on paper a great deal.
It's difficult to find, especially the work.
How many rooms do you have here for all this?
We have the large gallery that you just came in.
We have this show room, and the rest is offices and work space and storage space.
It's really large, though.
Do you have any more storage space free for this piece of thing extra-cigarette?
Would you be able to build room for any more?
Well, it's hard. We always have a storage.
We have a space problem because we keep everything.
Also, our files are always exploding.
It's very difficult to keep everything, but we do.
And as I say, we keep photographic material of everything.
And we have records of our exhibitions, lists,
our catalogs of the early shows are very skimpy because nobody had money to do elaborate catalogs.
We now sometimes publish very book length catalogs of things.
And of course, we are also continuing something that Otto Kalyer started as early as 1933.
We try to have as complete a record, a published record on the artists whose work we really foster.
And among them is Egon Chila.
Otto Kalyer compiled the first catalog resonate of his oil paintings in 1930.
And that book had hardly any publication, any distribution because the Nazis,
at the time there wasn't much call for.
And when the Nazis came to Austria in 1938, they went to the publisher and destroyed most of the books that were still in there.
So that book is a total rarity.
However, it is the basis of all Chila research.
Kalyer, in a year time, we have that book, of course.
And yes, we have a lot of the photos that went into that book.
We kept those, we were able to bring them to this country.
They were stored in the Neuropalerine, Vienna, and Kalyer was able to bring them over on a subsequent visit after the war.
And then he felt that it was necessary to update that book.
And it was published in both German and English in 1966.
That was an updated version with more catchers in it, more source material.
And in 1970, we did the graphic works of Egon Chila, which comprises only 17 works.
So it's not 17, I think.
Then in 1990, Jane Kalyer and I did a completely revised catalog, which includes the watercolors and drawings.
The product of ten years of research and work, while we conducted the gallery.
Jane did most of the work, among others, work, and while I ran the gallery.
She was home for weeks on end, months on end, while we were, you know, we had to make a living and do other things, many other things.
And then I went home, I'm Jane's the writer, Jane's a very good writer.
And I'm more of an editor type.
And also with Otto Kalyer's books, I helped a lot.
I was always a collider writer.
But the author's not the colliers.
Otto Kalyer actually, this is for the K or the C, K-A-L-L-I-R.
Now, this literature is in Mr. Spalik's previous books.
I'm sure.
He wanted, because he mentioned you, so he didn't see that this woman, there's nothing she doesn't know, walking institution.
And that's his heart.
Yes, everything is for heart.
I can get to her today.
I know Paulism Litz-Dem-Nudin.
Yes.
Well, now of course the books that I described, I shoot really well on them, because they've been published.
They are researched.
And so on publishing through what publisher?
Oh, always established publishers.
The first book was Joel Nye, which is very well-known Z, S-O-L-N-A-Y.
That was the 19th century.
Yes, published by Joel Nye, Vienna.
Paul, Paul, Paul, P-A-U-L, Paul, Joel Nye, of course.
And the American, the New Edition, the 1966 was published.
I mean, that's all known crown publishers.
Oh, crown.
And also the graphic works was crown.
And the Sheila catalog resume of 1990 was published by Harry and Abrams.
Oh, oh.
Yes.
Also, by the way, I should mention that a career did a catalog resume of the art of grammar, Moses, in which I very much collaborated.
And that was published also by Abrams.
Furthermore, career discovered in 1930s, the art of Richard Gaston, an artist who is hardly known, but who is now getting a very important show in Vienna, which opens in September, on September 20th.
And we are contributing a lot of material, we gave them all our raw material to work with.
And also we are sending some loans.
And Jane is going for the opening.
And we've done a lot of research on Gaston.
We have a recent book that was published by us on Kokoska and Gaston, in conjunction with an exhibition that we just held last year.
And the Gaston documentation is another work that Autocalea published through the Austrians, Gagarin, Vienna.
And Collier did all the space work on this artist.
And unfortunately, we were not able to bring all these works here to this country.
And I believe one reason why Gaston isn't well known is that Collier, simply couldn't see his way to also foster him the way he did Clinton, Sheila, and Kokoska, if he had the works of very large, we just didn't have storage space.
And if he had, I think Gaston would be known as well known.
Although there is less art available, Gaston had a very sad history.
He killed himself at the age of 25 and destroyed a good bit of his work.
And there are less than 100 works around.
So it's not as easy to, when there's a dearth of material, it's not as easy to make an artist well known.
As far as documentary material, I mean, all these artists, and I'm sure a lot that I forgot, we have photos and books, very large library.
I should mention some of the lesser known Austrian artists.
Gaston, who else do we have?
Is he related to Erse Laska Fudan?
No, no, no, he's not Laska at all.
He's Laska.
Laska, oh, okay.
Oscar Laska, LASK, LASK, E.
Who else?
So do you have a book?
I will give you a book.
It's called Austria's Expressionism.
It is one of a catalogue of one of four exhibitions that we held in commemoration of other colors deaf.
And it was a major long show in which, in the back, in the deadendum, we published all the books that are all clear published in his lifetime, and all the exhibitions that he arranged.
It starts with his death.
That was the point of this.
However, we have a list also of all the shows we did since.
And Jane and I have built up the gallery and its activities, very much in the spirit of the career, but also in continuation, and in elaboration of what he's done.
We've never been as active as we are now, and not even in careers most active times.
You have letters of the...
Like, given to you the exchange between artists and...
Absolutely. We have letters, letters of letters.
We've kept also, of course, all of our careers archives.
And he was friends with many, many illustrious people, some of whom I still knew.
For instance, we have a large archive of Richard Beall Hoffmann, who was a close friend of the careers, and who mind you until he died.
We have manuscripts of his letters.
That's what I'm going to tell you.
How about textbooks? Are you always about the art textbooks going out?
Well, we contribute very often. We publishers ask us for photo material or other materials.
And then we request a copy of the book, and so we have a huge library of what we call permissions, you know, things that we licensed or permitted to be published, and we have them all, we have a copy of each.
Did you have, or, translate, any of these things translated into different languages?
But your gallery is doing what is in Spanish or in a store?
Well, yes, if the textbooks, if the books are in other languages, for a more...
I mean, what you said, I met a lot of people here for a Spanish-speaking person who wanted to go about this.
Not really. We have a lot of German English literature about Spanish, very little.
German English, I like to hear.
Yes.
And I perhaps actually continue the roster of illustrious people. I mean, Collier has correspondence with Alma Marra, therefore, with Franz Werfeld, with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who was a close friend,
with Thomas Mann.
We have, for instance, Thomas Mann wrote the four word for an exhibition catalog of Max Liebermann's show, and we have the manuscript, and we have the postcard.
You have the original by Boulond Thomas Mann?
Yes, yes.
I wonder what I write down here.
Well, it's in your longers by now.
So you have a lot of ideas down here.
We have extensive correspondence with Max Reinhardt, who was a good friend.
Although Collier had, he was a collector of manuscripts, in fact, of works of historical importance.
And so we have a quote by correspondence, he admired.
I don't know. I just can't.
I know.
I have to trigger my memory a little bit.
He was one of these illustrious star names, fits for Unruh.
Okay.
Unruh.
We have whole manuscript of the book.
Thank you.
No, it's okay.
It's not one of those.
This is like a whole school is here.
Yes, it's a history of everything.
Do you have reviews from shows?
Yes, we have.
We have a lot of scrapbooks of all our shows.
And all the documents, like, well, normally, when I see documents, I've asked people, citizenship papers,
but I wouldn't or marriage like in superstitivity, but it's not quite good for our gallery.
Because the documents, when you, the original license, and stuff like that.
I should hope we have this.
You have to have that, yes, or as you would be.
Memorabilia from all kinds of things.
Memorabilia is, yes, for instance, on Sheila, we have enormous material to his wife, and things like that.
That's what they have.
The letters now.
Oh, wow.
I mean, you know, these are not letters to us, these are letters that we've collected.
That's a third part.
That's what I wanted to know.
Do you have that?
Lots of...
We have lots of Coco'ska correspondence.
We have a huge number of letters from Alfred Kubin to Otto Kaleer.
We have manuscripts by Kubin.
Manuscripts by Coco'ska.
Manuscripts by Coco'ska.
For instance, we have an unpublished manuscript of his first book, Detonement and Knob.
When I say we, it means either the family or some a person related to the gallery could even be me.
So, you know, we usually don't disclose personal ownership.
We simply say private collection and courtesy gallery, saying 10 because it's all under the umbrella of the gallery.
Of course, we understand that, okay.
So you have many coven items.
I didn't know if they were related.
We have, again, a lot of correspondence, a lot of documentary material about COVID, and also a few letters from her.
How about other interviews?
Like, we have other people, do you have an on tape or transcribed interviews?
About the artist and about...
We do the people here, what all is available?
To some extent, you know, every interview has a different viewpoint.
And both Jane and I have been interviewing on tape.
And you have tapes in this orc.
Yes, the slides of this orc pictures, most likely.
Right.
Audio or video?
Audio.
Oh my god.
The music here?
In what sense?
In what to what, three or two?
Oh, I don't know.
Is this by a composer that you may have here or...?
Well, an autocolleer had a large collection of musical manuscripts which unfortunately,
we had to sell recently.
Not we, it was really autocolleer had given it to members of his family long, long time ago.
So it's not...
It's part of the film.
It's recolective.
We still have a lot of photo stats of these things, and he collected these things.
And some things are still in the family.
Musical, musical manuscripts of some...
There's one by Kurt Weyer for instance, a just a page or two.
And there is one, there's some, also earlier, musical compositions such as by Schubert for instance.
Yeah, that's one thing.
Yeah, did he have a Schubert Mozart scores and so forth?
Well, he collected these things.
And some of them have some photo stats of these things, and a few of them are still in the possession of some of the members.
Did he about?
No, he had a little bit more.
It was...
Drawings of sketches, of course, ton of them.
Yes, yes.
And of course we have a lot of original material here all the time, but we have much more photo material.
And so much paper magazines, yes.
For that.
He also did the interest we should know about the stuff this year.
And the materials.
You are only interested, of course, in European back things.
I mean, we have American things too, but that's not the object.
It's more the back view of Europe.
Well, really.
See, this is about immigration, but still you've been here for so long.
We would expect that you would have naturally.
Yes, I mean, we've all become Americans, both career and I, and we were very anxious to become citizens as quickly as possible.
And so he became a citizen and so did I in the 40s.
Immediately.
When did he become a citizen?
Do you know?
When did you become a citizen?
Probably five years after he arrived.
He lived at that time.
That was the time.
It was...it's grongo.
It's me because I was categorized as an enemy alien if you can believe that.
This was one of those ridiculous...
No.
No, it's just that I always...
We're going to continue.
We can do a little more.
For whatever.
Just try and find out then.
Yeah, ask me questions.
I mean, the word...what to ask at this point? There's so much here.
I guess it's...there is no number.
You could give me about how many artists stuff is presented here.
Or should they represent it here?
That you had...is it over a hundred or a thousand?
No.
No. I would say under a hundred.
Certainly.
Under a hundred?
Yes. Because we try to concentrate on artists.
We don't...we're not the kind of gallery that just sells something because it happens to be for sale.
Yeah.
We like to have background information.
We like to be knowledgeable and really experts.
And you can't be an expert on over a hundred artists.
It's just impossible.
So I would say definitely under a hundred.
Under a hundred.
Before all of the...
Did you say there's a lack of space?
It's a chance to...you're not going to move or anything?
Well, in this current economical situation, we're certainly not moving.
And we're not expanding.
We were considering that at one point, but at this point, we're not.
At some time, we have to consolidate, perhaps put something in storage that's not so important.
We are constantly growing and we will never stop growing.
That's part of...we have an enormous paper accumulation because we believe in documenting things.
We even write letters.
We don't only make phone calls.
I'm just speechless.
And so our space demands increase all the time.
But we have a people who, like we call here, or what is the main...for the majority of time?
What is their main interest or requests?
What would the main questions be like most...
Well, this is very difficult to put them in a nutshell.
People we organize, for instance, traveling exhibitions.
We curate exhibitions from museums.
Right now, we do a major shield show for the National Gallery in Washington with loans from all over the world.
Do you mind?
No.
No, it's just that I always...
We're going to continue.
We can do a little more.
But whatever.
Just try and find out the...
Yeah, ask me questions.
I mean, what to ask at this point? There's so much here.
I guess there is no number.
You could give me about how many artists stuff is presented here.
Or should they represent it here?
Is it over a hundred or a thousand?
No.
No.
I would say under a hundred.
Certainly.
Under a hundred?
Yes.
Because we try to concentrate on artists.
We don't...
We're not the kind of gallery that just sells something because it happens to be for sales.
Yeah.
We like to have background information.
We like to be knowledgeable and really experts.
And you can't be an expert on over a hundred artists.
It's just impossible.
So I would say definitely under a hundred.
Under a hundred.
I would say there's a lot of space.
It's a chance to...
You're not going to move or anything?
Well, in this current economical situation, we're certainly not moving.
And we're not expanding.
We were considering that at one point, but at this point, we're not.
At some time, we have to consolidate, perhaps put something in storage that's not so important.
We are constantly growing and we will never stop growing.
That's part of...
We have an enormous paper accumulation because we believe in documenting things.
We even write letters.
We don't only make phone calls.
I'm facetious.
And so our space demands increase all the time.
But we have people who like...
Who are they calling here?
Or what is the main...
For the majority of time, what is their main interest or requests?
What would the main question be like most...
Well, this is very difficult to put them in a nutshell.
People... we organize, for instance, traveling exhibitions.
We curate exhibitions from museums.
Right now, we do a major shield show for the National Gallery in Washington with loans from all over the world.
So we get increase.
A lot.
We are on the phone with venues, with lenders, with...
Ingerance companies, with the organizers of the show,
this is done by the organization of the actual circulating of this particular exhibition,
which goes on to many Indianapolis and Toronto major museums there.
So that takes up a large part of our time currently.
We get increase, you know, for all kinds of things all day long.
You see how often the phone rings.
And this is August.
This is the best.
It's very hard to say what everything is.
You know, somebody wants to sell something in our field.
Another person wants to know the dates of an artist for a paper they're writing.
We get increase from starting with high school students to college professors.
To get close to Europe and South America or Asia.
We deal a lot with Japan.
Oh, really?
Not too much with South America's song, but not very much.
And a great deal with Europe.
An awful lot of calls coming from people, in fact.
There's a lot of work going on at this gallery that's conducted in German.
I do all the German correspondence.
And many people, I think, would probably manage in English.
But since I do German as easily as English, it's easier.
It prevents misunderstandings.
We are very, I don't know if you realize that we are very interested in social and political aspects.
I know you're there.
Our next exhibition is going to be entitled, Art and Politics in Weimar, Germany.
We have done a lot of shows that are theme exhibitions.
For instance, we did recently a show on death.
The images of death in German art.
It was a daunting show and it was fantastic.
It started with Dura and Holbein and got carried through the 19th and into the 20th century.
And we like to do research of this kind.
And the vibe is fine to do it.
We kill ourselves.
It's hard work.
Yes, it is.
But of course we do have a background.
We don't have to start from scratch.
Although, once you get into it, you realize how little we know.
We realize how little we know.
I took a trip to Germany just to collect works for this exhibition.
And it contains the art of heart field,
to do a lot of political art.
You know, these color artists that he did for undercover newspapers
when the Nazis were already in power.
They're artists, of course, like George Gross and Otto Ditz.
But also lesser-known artists.
And of course, Covid.
But lesser-known artists like Hu Buch and whom you may never have heard of.
And top-parent and women artists such as Gertr. Overback.
All unknown.
That's another thing we're doing, by the way,
that leads me into a project that's major.
We're organizing a exhibition of women artists and German expressionism.
And of course the people that are known, not after me, are the Muntar.
And Kalamota Song Becker and Ketkhollitz, but there are lots more.
This show we are organizing for several American museums.
It's not going to be here in this gallery.
It's much too big.
And it'll hopefully be in 1995.
And we have a little bit of it.
So this is a tip.
One of them will be probably the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington.
And we hope to solicit.
We're just beginning to do a checklist and a budget.
And Jane Kaleer has taken a trip to Germany just to organize that show.
Do you apply for a grant to keep this show going?
No way. We do this out of our own money.
We do this with our own money.
We'll never be rich because of this.
But we love doing these things.
And if we just did selling and buying, we could go to Miami or go to the bid.
Or wherever we would want to do.
But we don't do this kind of thing because we enjoy working.
And...
What do you think I'm working at the age of 72 full time?
We love it.
Yes.
We do take vacations once in a while.
Just two.
Two.
We're doing hardly ever.
But even if you take a vacation, I bet you'll go to a museum.
Of course.
Okay.
So you're so into it, you can't stop.
That's beautiful.
It's wonderful.
It's facts of papers and we have that from lectures.
Yes.
And Jane likes it.
She's quite a bit.
That's a matter of fact.
And her relation to Mr. Kaleer daughter?
Grand daughter.
Grand daughter.
You said that earlier.
Yes, Jane's.
Yeah.
She has papers.
Yes, she's written a good many books in addition to all those catalogs that I mentioned.
She wrote for fun, Clint.
Yeah.
For Harry and Abrams.
No, I didn't mention that before.
She's written a book on Clint, don't you?
Who's that Clint?
Yes.
Did you write to him?
No.
Well, I wrote that essay on collectors and collecting of the work of Colwitz.
But I write, writing is a little difficult for me.
I mean, I write letters all the time.
It's not like that.
But you mean the creative and beautiful writing.
And Jane assisted me greatly in making it, polishing it, making it work well.
She's an excellent writer, even if I may say so.
I think she's very, very good.
She's the essays to all our checklists.
And all I do is, you know, proofread and edit and make suggestions sometimes.
Oh, just like you do.
Oh, you give me tons of material.
And I thank you.
If I could have a little thing, a little book.
Yes, I give you a whole lot of literature.
That'd be nice.
Thank you.
It is now 1.30.
I'm going to even sign off.
Thank you so much, Mrs. Bob.
This is tons of material.
This is not recording.
Oh gosh, what's happening?
Okay, this is
Ablee and it is first day, August 1993.
And I am with you and be a full
name and how you know.
He'll be a guard, backer, B-A-C-H-E-R-T.
Backer, C-K-E-E-H-E.
I'm sorry.
Bacha.
Profession co-director of the gallery, Saint-E-Tien.
Chois-Bella, G-A-L.
Is it the French way?
Yes.
Galilee, Saint-E-Tien.
Saint-E-Tien.
And I'm having problems technical. Why is this thing not working?
It's work.
Okay. May I have your birthday?
Yes. I was born on April 3rd, 1921.
In Mannheim, in Mannheim, Germany.
Here, 24 West 57th Street.
New York, eighth floor. New York, New York.
1.0019.
And phone number 245-6734.
Okay. I'd like to make a note that this interview will be different, I guess, because this is the co-director of the gallery.
And not exactly, what would you say?
Not exactly following the immediate guidelines of this.
So this will be like a biographical sketch and just tell us your training, education back in Germany,
and how you got here when you came, when you became the citizen, I guess you were a citizen.
Oh, and you.
And when you came here, and what the gallery has.
Okay. That'd be nice to have.
Well, I grew up in Mannheim until I was 15.
I emigrated in August 1936 to this country.
I came with my older sister at that time.
My parents had to stay in Germany because they didn't get an affidavit.
However, they managed to obtain one with our help once we were better established here and came in 1939.
I went to high school when I arrived thanks to the financial support of the proverbial American uncle.
And when I graduated in January 1939, I had to seek employment immediately.
Even though I had a scholarship to go to Ovalon College, I could not take a vantage of it because I had no money for my support.
And so I looked for employment.
This was depression times still in the United States.
And I managed because I was already familiar with the art galleries of New York having traveled to all, you know, seen them all during my free time.
There weren't that many in those days.
And I just asked, wait for one to the next and ask if they needed an assistant.
And the gallery near and off, near and off gallery took me.
That gallery was run by Karl Neuerndorf, who had emigrated about 1934 from Cologne.
He had clays and candenskies in France Mark and the most fantastic things in his gallery and hardly any customers because this art was not well known at that time.
He managed just to skimp to get by.
And he took me for the illustrious salary of about $3 a week.
I was able to live at home.
My sister had, by that time, landed a fairly good, separatarial job and I think she was making $30 a week.
I don't think you have any idea of the value of money at that time.
The rent was for a room or five room apartment, which we had at that time on Riverside Drive and 153rd Street, was $70 a month.
Quarter milk was ten cents. The subway fare was the nickel.
$3 a week is something that didn't get me very far, but because I was living at home and we managed, it was very difficult in the beginning.
Very, very difficult. And a lot of trees were just out of the question.
Just the same Mr. Neorendorf increased my salary over time.
And when I left him in 1930, in 1940, I made $12.
And he was have increased it to 15 if I had been willing to stay.
But by that time, Otto Kalleer had arrived in this country.
He visited Neorendorf and there for I met him and I did want a change.
I learned a lot at Neorendorf. I had no prior a secretarial or other experience.
But as a boss and as a setup, it didn't suit me. It was chaotic, really.
And Kalleer seemed to be a better boss and a more organized person.
And I felt that I had more of a working relationship and it proved to be extremely correct because I'm still here.
I started at the gallery sent it in November 4, 1940.
And have been ever since Otto Kalleer died in November 1978.
At that time, his granddaughter, Jane Kalleer, had worked with us for one year.
She started in 1977. And when after Kalleer's death, Jane and I took over the direction of the gallery.
We've done that ever since.
Kalleer, you've been called director since 1978.
Yes. My role, of course, in the gallery increased as I gathered experience.
I was extremely young when I started and had little experience.
I picked up stenography on the way. I also picked up a college degree. I went to Hunter College at night.
Did you never get to Oberlin?
Never got to Oberlin. Not, it never been there even.
But I did my BA at Hunter with the Summankomlau to the degree at night.
It took me quite a long time.
And at that time, I graduated in 1954, they didn't even have an art department.
I had to sort of get my courses as I went along in humanities, it was called.
And I took a lot of anthropology and archaeology. Astronomy, geology, it was wonderful.
I got an excellent grounding in general scientific and scholarly work.
It was a very, very good education.
Did you get a scholarship to go there?
No, that was free.
College was probably free.
You want to turn this out?
He's acting a little funny, but he's working.
All right.
Okay, let's continue.
I also took a number of courses at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in anthropology,
and at the Extension course at the University of New Mexico in Santa Fe, about American Indian art and archaeology.
It was very, very interesting to me.
And I found it much more important to study something that I could see in the original,
rather than taking art courses and looking at slides.
You won't have something wrong.
Very much in column with Dr. Schvallik, that's what he does.
Yes, he studied here the collection of American.
Right. I felt that I had so much exposure to art in the gallery surroundings
and I didn't need courses.
You see my work here.
When you asked about my education, I constantly read the literature that comes in.
I read the books that are being published about the artists that we represent,
or that we are interested in, and to sit in a school room and listen to a teacher
doesn't make any sense to me anyway.
I do that in my free time.
I go to museums and I look at the things and they get a much better education.
Also handling the actual art is such a wonderful experience and such a thrill.
And you learn a lot just doing that.
Otto Kaleer was a highly educated man who also gave me an enormous background on Austrian art, particularly,
but he also did know a lot about German art.
And he also knew a lot about technique such as lithography and etching and woodcuts.
And that's very important in my field to know the difference needles to say between these media,
but much more refined differences of technique.
So I have a looked at printing presses and things like that and watched artists do etching and lithography.
And that's very important when you want to do the kind of thing you're doing.
We are also giving our staff that kind of background.
And I've taught innumerable people how to frame and map things, for instance,
and we never let any original artwork out of the house into a framers or a packers place without supervision or without most of it we do right here.
That's our policy. It's been our policy for a long time.
Do you paint yourself?
No, I don't. I have much too much respect for good painters.
I don't.
But you frame the map?
Oh yes, that we do.
Now, Arca Lear started in 1939. He started this gallery and came over with many Austrian artists' works,
such as from the 19th and 20th century, such as Valmula, for instance, who was totally unknown here.
He was 19th century and out, for an art, people like that who are still not very well known here.
And then he came with Clint's and Chilis and Kokoska's and Kubins and they were equally amazing.
You say Kokoska?
Orska Kokoska.
Orska Kokoska.
You can do either one, but Kokoska himself said Kokoska.
I think so.
That's...
Okay, I'm learning something.
However, it was very difficult to put these people on the map and it took many years.
French art was what was in demand here, even though it was depression times, it was better and easier to sell those.
Chilis also had a few sysons and one was and things like that and he managed to sell some of them.
However, he had a hard time becoming established.
He was a new man, so to speak, and it took quite a few years to establish a reputation which in the meantime has grown and flourished.
One of the things that he was interested in was to see what was going on in this country.
And he looked at a lot of American art, which he didn't particularly like because it was derivative of European art.
And he didn't find that particularly interesting until he came across the art of Ramamoses.
Someone named by the name of Calder walked in one day and showed him among other American folk art, works by this old lady and Calir said this is interesting.
And he was to say he organized her first exhibition in this gallery.
And you didn't know that in 1940 and we have represented her ever since.
And Ramamoses just took off fairly soon, not immediately either, but over the years in around 1949 she really became a celebrity.
And it was something that simply took off the public, simply loved her work possibly because of war times, hard times, people enjoyed the generally pretty pictures, but the art establishment in the beginning, while in the beginning they approved of her.
In the 50s when abstract expressionism took off, Ramamoses was a non-know.
But the public continued to like her and lots of people purchased her works and we were generally extremely successful.
We still are. The person who just walked in was looking for a Moses.
He had bought one before and he's looking for another one.
I went to Merzik.
Pleasant Billy?
Oh yes, yes. We're very familiar with that museum. In fact, we have a lot to do with that.
And we, something Otto Calir did in which belongs into the archive department.
He began very early on to register the copyright of her art so that it could be used only without permission.
That saved guards, the artist's rights, and he made an agreement with Ramamoses whereby the works that are reproduced are being paid for by the licensees.
And Ramakat, very handsome royalties and the family still does to this day.
Which is an agreement that no one that I know has ever done in such fairness and such decency.
I've heard a lot of exploitative, about exploitative contracts with artists that dealers have made and we certainly safeguarded Ramamoses' rights.
We do the same for several American artists whose work we now represent among the art speakermen who did the mouse, you know, the Holocaust series.
It's called Bethear?
Yes, we represent him.
We did his exhibition on the tomb of volumes of mouse and we represent him.
We just began a traveling exhibition series that starts at the Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
Now, the history of the gallery...
It was the name.
How is it called?
San Etienne.
Why?
That's French for Saint Stephen's.
Saint Stephen's or Stefan's dome in Vienna is the landmark of Vienna and that's where Otto Kalyer came from.
He emigrated in 1938 with his family to Switzerland but he couldn't get any working papers there and therefore established a gallery in Paris on the Rousse Foubou Saint-Onore.
And because he wanted to give it a French name, needless to say, he called it Galerysen et Etienne.
In memory of his gallery in Vienna, which by the way remained in some kind of activity until the mid-50s, he gave the gallery just gave it as a gift to his secretary at the time.
And it was called the Noia Galerysen.
And he continued it through the Nazi times and gave it back to him after he, after the Holocaust and all the nightmares that took place.
And he finally sold it but it is still in existence in the local in which it was located in Vienna and is now called Galerysen et St-Stéphane.
So in a way it even has our name.
Kalyer in the meantime had to leave, left Paris because he wanted to be reunited with his family and they all came over here in 1939 and he established what he thought would be a branch of the French gallery and therefore called it Galerysen et Etienne.
Besides French names were very fashionable at the time French art was in and so he decided to leave that name but he never went back to Paris to his gallery.
The gallery was discontinued and the inventory was put in storage.
Miraculously it survived without a blemish and in 1946 we got a big crate with clinics and chelars and cockroaches and all kinds of wonderful things in it.
It was like Christmas or Hanukkah, whatever, to celebrate.
And in the meantime Kalyer had persisted in making the Austrian artists whose merit he deeply believed better known in this country.
We did one show after another showing their works and when they were not understood we did it again.
We did the first Chila exhibition in 1941, the first Kubeen exhibition in 1941, the first Kokozka exhibition in 1940, the first Clinton exhibition as late as 1959.
It's not because we could not possibly get enough works together by 1959 enough works had come from Europe so that we could assemble a very respectable show.
We then took on the work of Kit Colvin's who had begun.
I have two firsts.
Really? Well, chief, my specialty. I have done a lot of work on it.
We're hanging on my wall in LA.
Is that right?
Yes.
Well, you're seeing three right here, two right here. They're both colds. It's an early and late one.
We specialize very much in colds and we have done 30, 40 exhibitions of her work and have been in the Kishin rush veteran on.
She was born in Königsberg, which is in East Prussia and now belongs to Poland.
But she lived in Berlin for most of her life.
And where did he pass on?
She died in 1945 in Dresden, where she had sung refuge from the Barbenz of Berlin.
And now Colwitz was an artist who never really had a time of not being popular.
During the war, these German artists like Nolden, Kirschner, you couldn't sell them for a lot of money.
German art was disdained.
But Colwitz, because of the social content of her work, didn't matter.
People didn't mind that she was German. They didn't care. She was on our side.
That was quite clear because of the content of her work.
And so during the war, we did some very successful exhibitions of Colwitz.
And then after the war, on and on, she just continued to be better known.
It is interesting too that Colwitz, we were not the first to introduce her.
We helped to continue her fame and her reputation.
But her work was shown in New York as early as the 20s.
The New York Public Library acquired works by her in I think 1912.
Very early, very interesting.
You had all this stuff in your, in this gallery, all these, it's like an archive.
Yes. For instance, what I'm telling you is the product of research, of course.
And in fact, I learned some of these things not too long ago,
because I did an article for an essay for a co-luck of a Colwitz exhibition
that took place at the National Gallery.
And they asked me to write an article on collectors and collecting of Colwitz.
And that's where I learned all these things.
And so, of course, the background and the source material of all this is right here.
We have, I should perhaps concentrate a little bit on the archives of the gallery,
because of this long history, because we have collected archival material
on all these artists and some of them I haven't even named.
We kept, we have photographs, brought us full of photographs.
And when people do, for instance, a co-luck resume on Max Lieberman,
they come to us and they found all the numbers.
The photographs, what artists do you have?
We did, this by the way, you should really, instead of me speaking all this,
this is where I would have done a little bit of research before.
I mean, I can't evoke all this.
The people that we have introduced are Lovis Korent, Max Lieberman,
Paula Mordersong Becker,
in addition to the co-luvis Korent.
Korent, that's the C-O-R-I-N-T-H.
We have done many exhibitions of his.
And so, when someone looks for photographs of anything, they just have to come to us.
We have a large print collection of works by Korent,
and also some watercolors and drawings, some are hanging in the current exhibition.
Max Lieberman was an artist whose work we introduced.
We did some exhibitions of oil paintings and of his graphic work.
We did not have any shows of his recently.
Somehow, we've grown away from his art.
One of the artists that we represented was,
who emigrated to this country, was Oigin Spiro, SPIRO.
And we have an archive of his work.
He's not as well known.
He was, however, well known in Germany.
He was the president of the Berlin Session before he was thrown out.
We introduced the art of Irma Rochstein,
R-O-T-H-S-T-E-I-N, and Irma I-R-M-A.
She was a sculptor, Austrian.
And someone in Austria is now writing a book on her.
And she was not terribly well known.
She's not outstanding like some of the other artists that I've named.
You know, these things come now in a fairly disorderly way to my mind.
Ernst Barlach is an artist whose work we show periodically.
We did by far the best Barlach exhibition ever in this country.
In 1962, I believe, with wooden sculptures,
you know, those are extremely rare and unique.
And I was recently in the Barlach Museum in Hamburg,
where I had sort of a reunion with some of the works that were in our show.
We show his woodcuts and lithoplasms works on paper a great deal.
It's difficult to find, especially the work.
How many rooms do you have here for all this?
We have the large gallery that you just came in.
We have this show room, and the rest is offices and work space and storage space.
It's really large, though.
Do you have any more storage space free for this piece of thing extra-cigarette?
Would you be able to build room for any more?
Well, it's hard. We always have a storage.
We have a space problem because we keep everything.
Also, our files are always exploding.
It's very difficult to keep everything, but we do.
And as I say, we keep photographic material of everything.
And we have records of our exhibitions, lists,
our catalogs of the early shows are very skimpy because nobody had money to do elaborate catalogs.
We now sometimes publish very book length catalogs of things.
And of course, we are also continuing something that Otto Kalyer started as early as 1933.
We try to have as complete a record, a published record on the artists whose work we really foster.
And among them is Egon Chila.
Otto Kalyer compiled the first catalog resonate of his oil paintings in 1930.
And that book had hardly any publication, any distribution because the Nazis,
at the time there wasn't much call for.
And when the Nazis came to Austria in 1938, they went to the publisher and destroyed most of the books that were still in there.
So that book is a total rarity.
However, it is the basis of all Chila research.
Kalyer, in a year time, we have that book, of course.
And yes, we have a lot of the photos that went into that book.
We kept those, we were able to bring them to this country.
They were stored in the Neuropalerine, Vienna, and Kalyer was able to bring them over on a subsequent visit after the war.
And then he felt that it was necessary to update that book.
And it was published in both German and English in 1966.
That was an updated version with more catchers in it, more source material.
And in 1970, we did the graphic works of Egon Chila, which comprises only 17 works.
So it's not 17, I think.
Then in 1990, Jane Kalyer and I did a completely revised catalog, which includes the watercolors and drawings.
The product of ten years of research and work, while we conducted the gallery.
Jane did most of the work, among others, work, and while I ran the gallery.
She was home for weeks on end, months on end, while we were, you know, we had to make a living and do other things, many other things.
And then I went home, I'm Jane's the writer, Jane's a very good writer.
And I'm more of an editor type.
And also with Otto Kalyer's books, I helped a lot.
I was always a collider writer.
But the author's not the colliers.
Otto Kalyer actually, this is for the K or the C, K-A-L-L-I-R.
Now, this literature is in Mr. Spalik's previous books.
I'm sure.
He wanted, because he mentioned you, so he didn't see that this woman, there's nothing she doesn't know, walking institution.
And that's his heart.
Yes, everything is for heart.
I can get to her today.
I know Paulism Litz-Dem-Nudin.
Yes.
Well, now of course the books that I described, I shoot really well on them, because they've been published.
They are researched.
And so on publishing through what publisher?
Oh, always established publishers.
The first book was Joel Nye, which is very well-known Z, S-O-L-N-A-Y.
That was the 19th century.
Yes, published by Joel Nye, Vienna.
Paul, Paul, Paul, P-A-U-L, Paul, Joel Nye, of course.
And the American, the New Edition, the 1966 was published.
I mean, that's all known crown publishers.
Oh, crown.
And also the graphic works was crown.
And the Sheila catalog resume of 1990 was published by Harry and Abrams.
Oh, oh.
Yes.
Also, by the way, I should mention that a career did a catalog resume of the art of grammar, Moses, in which I very much collaborated.
And that was published also by Abrams.
Furthermore, career discovered in 1930s, the art of Richard Gaston, an artist who is hardly known, but who is now getting a very important show in Vienna, which opens in September, on September 20th.
And we are contributing a lot of material, we gave them all our raw material to work with.
And also we are sending some loans.
And Jane is going for the opening.
And we've done a lot of research on Gaston.
We have a recent book that was published by us on Kokoska and Gaston, in conjunction with an exhibition that we just held last year.
And the Gaston documentation is another work that Autocalea published through the Austrians, Gagarin, Vienna.
And Collier did all the space work on this artist.
And unfortunately, we were not able to bring all these works here to this country.
And I believe one reason why Gaston isn't well known is that Collier, simply couldn't see his way to also foster him the way he did Clinton, Sheila, and Kokoska, if he had the works of very large, we just didn't have storage space.
And if he had, I think Gaston would be known as well known.
Although there is less art available, Gaston had a very sad history.
He killed himself at the age of 25 and destroyed a good bit of his work.
And there are less than 100 works around.
So it's not as easy to, when there's a dearth of material, it's not as easy to make an artist well known.
As far as documentary material, I mean, all these artists, and I'm sure a lot that I forgot, we have photos and books, very large library.
I should mention some of the lesser known Austrian artists.
Gaston, who else do we have?
Is he related to Erse Laska Fudan?
No, no, no, he's not Laska at all.
He's Laska.
Laska, oh, okay.
Oscar Laska, LASK, LASK, E.
Who else?
So do you have a book?
I will give you a book.
It's called Austria's Expressionism.
It is one of a catalogue of one of four exhibitions that we held in commemoration of other colors deaf.
And it was a major long show in which, in the back, in the deadendum, we published all the books that are all clear published in his lifetime, and all the exhibitions that he arranged.
It starts with his death.
That was the point of this.
However, we have a list also of all the shows we did since.
And Jane and I have built up the gallery and its activities, very much in the spirit of the career, but also in continuation, and in elaboration of what he's done.
We've never been as active as we are now, and not even in careers most active times.
You have letters of the...
Like, given to you the exchange between artists and...
Absolutely. We have letters, letters of letters.
We've kept also, of course, all of our careers archives.
And he was friends with many, many illustrious people, some of whom I still knew.
For instance, we have a large archive of Richard Beall Hoffmann, who was a close friend of the careers, and who mind you until he died.
We have manuscripts of his letters.
That's what I'm going to tell you.
How about textbooks? Are you always about the art textbooks going out?
Well, we contribute very often. We publishers ask us for photo material or other materials.
And then we request a copy of the book, and so we have a huge library of what we call permissions, you know, things that we licensed or permitted to be published, and we have them all, we have a copy of each.
Did you have, or, translate, any of these things translated into different languages?
But your gallery is doing what is in Spanish or in a store?
Well, yes, if the textbooks, if the books are in other languages, for a more...
I mean, what you said, I met a lot of people here for a Spanish-speaking person who wanted to go about this.
Not really. We have a lot of German English literature about Spanish, very little.
German English, I like to hear.
Yes.
And I perhaps actually continue the roster of illustrious people. I mean, Collier has correspondence with Alma Marra, therefore, with Franz Werfeld, with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who was a close friend,
with Thomas Mann.
We have, for instance, Thomas Mann wrote the four word for an exhibition catalog of Max Liebermann's show, and we have the manuscript, and we have the postcard.
You have the original by Boulond Thomas Mann?
Yes, yes.
I wonder what I write down here.
Well, it's in your longers by now.
So you have a lot of ideas down here.
We have extensive correspondence with Max Reinhardt, who was a good friend.
Although Collier had, he was a collector of manuscripts, in fact, of works of historical importance.
And so we have a quote by correspondence, he admired.
I don't know. I just can't.
I know.
I have to trigger my memory a little bit.
He was one of these illustrious star names, fits for Unruh.
Okay.
Unruh.
We have whole manuscript of the book.
Thank you.
No, it's okay.
It's not one of those.
This is like a whole school is here.
Yes, it's a history of everything.
Do you have reviews from shows?
Yes, we have.
We have a lot of scrapbooks of all our shows.
And all the documents, like, well, normally, when I see documents, I've asked people, citizenship papers,
but I wouldn't or marriage like in superstitivity, but it's not quite good for our gallery.
Because the documents, when you, the original license, and stuff like that.
I should hope we have this.
You have to have that, yes, or as you would be.
Memorabilia from all kinds of things.
Memorabilia is, yes, for instance, on Sheila, we have enormous material to his wife, and things like that.
That's what they have.
The letters now.
Oh, wow.
I mean, you know, these are not letters to us, these are letters that we've collected.
That's a third part.
That's what I wanted to know.
Do you have that?
Lots of...
We have lots of Coco'ska correspondence.
We have a huge number of letters from Alfred Kubin to Otto Kaleer.
We have manuscripts by Kubin.
Manuscripts by Coco'ska.
Manuscripts by Coco'ska.
For instance, we have an unpublished manuscript of his first book, Detonement and Knob.
When I say we, it means either the family or some a person related to the gallery could even be me.
So, you know, we usually don't disclose personal ownership.
We simply say private collection and courtesy gallery, saying 10 because it's all under the umbrella of the gallery.
Of course, we understand that, okay.
So you have many coven items.
I didn't know if they were related.
We have, again, a lot of correspondence, a lot of documentary material about COVID, and also a few letters from her.
How about other interviews?
Like, we have other people, do you have an on tape or transcribed interviews?
About the artist and about...
We do the people here, what all is available?
To some extent, you know, every interview has a different viewpoint.
And both Jane and I have been interviewing on tape.
And you have tapes in this orc.
Yes, the slides of this orc pictures, most likely.
Right.
Audio or video?
Audio.
Oh my god.
The music here?
In what sense?
In what to what, three or two?
Oh, I don't know.
Is this by a composer that you may have here or...?
Well, an autocolleer had a large collection of musical manuscripts which unfortunately,
we had to sell recently.
Not we, it was really autocolleer had given it to members of his family long, long time ago.
So it's not...
It's part of the film.
It's recolective.
We still have a lot of photo stats of these things, and he collected these things.
And some things are still in the family.
Musical, musical manuscripts of some...
There's one by Kurt Weyer for instance, a just a page or two.
And there is one, there's some, also earlier, musical compositions such as by Schubert for instance.
Yeah, that's one thing.
Yeah, did he have a Schubert Mozart scores and so forth?
Well, he collected these things.
And some of them have some photo stats of these things, and a few of them are still in the possession of some of the members.
Did he about?
No, he had a little bit more.
It was...
Drawings of sketches, of course, ton of them.
Yes, yes.
And of course we have a lot of original material here all the time, but we have much more photo material.
And so much paper magazines, yes.
For that.
He also did the interest we should know about the stuff this year.
And the materials.
You are only interested, of course, in European back things.
I mean, we have American things too, but that's not the object.
It's more the back view of Europe.
Well, really.
See, this is about immigration, but still you've been here for so long.
We would expect that you would have naturally.
Yes, I mean, we've all become Americans, both career and I, and we were very anxious to become citizens as quickly as possible.
And so he became a citizen and so did I in the 40s.
Immediately.
When did he become a citizen?
Do you know?
When did you become a citizen?
Probably five years after he arrived.
He lived at that time.
That was the time.
It was...it's grongo.
It's me because I was categorized as an enemy alien if you can believe that.
This was one of those ridiculous...
No.
No, it's just that I always...
We're going to continue.
We can do a little more.
For whatever.
Just try and find out then.
Yeah, ask me questions.
I mean, the word...what to ask at this point? There's so much here.
I guess it's...there is no number.
You could give me about how many artists stuff is presented here.
Or should they represent it here?
That you had...is it over a hundred or a thousand?
No.
No. I would say under a hundred.
Certainly.
Under a hundred?
Yes. Because we try to concentrate on artists.
We don't...we're not the kind of gallery that just sells something because it happens to be for sale.
Yeah.
We like to have background information.
We like to be knowledgeable and really experts.
And you can't be an expert on over a hundred artists.
It's just impossible.
So I would say definitely under a hundred.
Under a hundred.
Before all of the...
Did you say there's a lack of space?
It's a chance to...you're not going to move or anything?
Well, in this current economical situation, we're certainly not moving.
And we're not expanding.
We were considering that at one point, but at this point, we're not.
At some time, we have to consolidate, perhaps put something in storage that's not so important.
We are constantly growing and we will never stop growing.
That's part of...we have an enormous paper accumulation because we believe in documenting things.
We even write letters.
We don't only make phone calls.
I'm just speechless.
And so our space demands increase all the time.
But we have a people who, like we call here, or what is the main...for the majority of time?
What is their main interest or requests?
What would the main questions be like most...
Well, this is very difficult to put them in a nutshell.
People we organize, for instance, traveling exhibitions.
We curate exhibitions from museums.
Right now, we do a major shield show for the National Gallery in Washington with loans from all over the world.
Do you mind?
No.
No, it's just that I always...
We're going to continue.
We can do a little more.
But whatever.
Just try and find out the...
Yeah, ask me questions.
I mean, what to ask at this point? There's so much here.
I guess there is no number.
You could give me about how many artists stuff is presented here.
Or should they represent it here?
Is it over a hundred or a thousand?
No.
No.
I would say under a hundred.
Certainly.
Under a hundred?
Yes.
Because we try to concentrate on artists.
We don't...
We're not the kind of gallery that just sells something because it happens to be for sales.
Yeah.
We like to have background information.
We like to be knowledgeable and really experts.
And you can't be an expert on over a hundred artists.
It's just impossible.
So I would say definitely under a hundred.
Under a hundred.
I would say there's a lot of space.
It's a chance to...
You're not going to move or anything?
Well, in this current economical situation, we're certainly not moving.
And we're not expanding.
We were considering that at one point, but at this point, we're not.
At some time, we have to consolidate, perhaps put something in storage that's not so important.
We are constantly growing and we will never stop growing.
That's part of...
We have an enormous paper accumulation because we believe in documenting things.
We even write letters.
We don't only make phone calls.
I'm facetious.
And so our space demands increase all the time.
But we have people who like...
Who are they calling here?
Or what is the main...
For the majority of time, what is their main interest or requests?
What would the main question be like most...
Well, this is very difficult to put them in a nutshell.
People... we organize, for instance, traveling exhibitions.
We curate exhibitions from museums.
Right now, we do a major shield show for the National Gallery in Washington with loans from all over the world.
So we get increase.
A lot.
We are on the phone with venues, with lenders, with...
Ingerance companies, with the organizers of the show,
this is done by the organization of the actual circulating of this particular exhibition,
which goes on to many Indianapolis and Toronto major museums there.
So that takes up a large part of our time currently.
We get increase, you know, for all kinds of things all day long.
You see how often the phone rings.
And this is August.
This is the best.
It's very hard to say what everything is.
You know, somebody wants to sell something in our field.
Another person wants to know the dates of an artist for a paper they're writing.
We get increase from starting with high school students to college professors.
To get close to Europe and South America or Asia.
We deal a lot with Japan.
Oh, really?
Not too much with South America's song, but not very much.
And a great deal with Europe.
An awful lot of calls coming from people, in fact.
There's a lot of work going on at this gallery that's conducted in German.
I do all the German correspondence.
And many people, I think, would probably manage in English.
But since I do German as easily as English, it's easier.
It prevents misunderstandings.
We are very, I don't know if you realize that we are very interested in social and political aspects.
I know you're there.
Our next exhibition is going to be entitled, Art and Politics in Weimar, Germany.
We have done a lot of shows that are theme exhibitions.
For instance, we did recently a show on death.
The images of death in German art.
It was a daunting show and it was fantastic.
It started with Dura and Holbein and got carried through the 19th and into the 20th century.
And we like to do research of this kind.
And the vibe is fine to do it.
We kill ourselves.
It's hard work.
Yes, it is.
But of course we do have a background.
We don't have to start from scratch.
Although, once you get into it, you realize how little we know.
We realize how little we know.
I took a trip to Germany just to collect works for this exhibition.
And it contains the art of heart field,
to do a lot of political art.
You know, these color artists that he did for undercover newspapers
when the Nazis were already in power.
They're artists, of course, like George Gross and Otto Ditz.
But also lesser-known artists.
And of course, Covid.
But lesser-known artists like Hu Buch and whom you may never have heard of.
And top-parent and women artists such as Gertr. Overback.
All unknown.
That's another thing we're doing, by the way,
that leads me into a project that's major.
We're organizing a exhibition of women artists and German expressionism.
And of course the people that are known, not after me, are the Muntar.
And Kalamota Song Becker and Ketkhollitz, but there are lots more.
This show we are organizing for several American museums.
It's not going to be here in this gallery.
It's much too big.
And it'll hopefully be in 1995.
And we have a little bit of it.
So this is a tip.
One of them will be probably the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington.
And we hope to solicit.
We're just beginning to do a checklist and a budget.
And Jane Kaleer has taken a trip to Germany just to organize that show.
Do you apply for a grant to keep this show going?
No way. We do this out of our own money.
We do this with our own money.
We'll never be rich because of this.
But we love doing these things.
And if we just did selling and buying, we could go to Miami or go to the bid.
Or wherever we would want to do.
But we don't do this kind of thing because we enjoy working.
And...
What do you think I'm working at the age of 72 full time?
We love it.
Yes.
We do take vacations once in a while.
Just two.
Two.
We're doing hardly ever.
But even if you take a vacation, I bet you'll go to a museum.
Of course.
Okay.
So you're so into it, you can't stop.
That's beautiful.
It's wonderful.
It's facts of papers and we have that from lectures.
Yes.
And Jane likes it.
She's quite a bit.
That's a matter of fact.
And her relation to Mr. Kaleer daughter?
Grand daughter.
Grand daughter.
You said that earlier.
Yes, Jane's.
Yeah.
She has papers.
Yes, she's written a good many books in addition to all those catalogs that I mentioned.
She wrote for fun, Clint.
Yeah.
For Harry and Abrams.
No, I didn't mention that before.
She's written a book on Clint, don't you?
Who's that Clint?
Yes.
Did you write to him?
No.
Well, I wrote that essay on collectors and collecting of the work of Colwitz.
But I write, writing is a little difficult for me.
I mean, I write letters all the time.
It's not like that.
But you mean the creative and beautiful writing.
And Jane assisted me greatly in making it, polishing it, making it work well.
She's an excellent writer, even if I may say so.
I think she's very, very good.
She's the essays to all our checklists.
And all I do is, you know, proofread and edit and make suggestions sometimes.
Oh, just like you do.
Oh, you give me tons of material.
And I thank you.
If I could have a little thing, a little book.
Yes, I give you a whole lot of literature.
That'd be nice.
Thank you.
It is now 1.30.
I'm going to even sign off.
Thank you so much, Mrs. Bob.
This is tons of material.
