George Wittenborn

George Wittenborn (* 13. May 1905 in Hamburg as Otto Gustav Ernst Wittenborn ; † 15. October 1974 in Scarsdale , State of New York) was a German-American booksellers and publishers.

life and work

George Wittenborn was the offspring of a local bookseller dynasty. He spent his apprenticeship years in the family business in Hamburg Altona . From 1927 he worked in Karl Buchholz 's bookstore in Berlin, followed in 1932 by an internship at the Haag-Drugulin office in Leipzig. Before the National Socialists came to power, Wittenborn emigrated to Paris in 1933 , where he ran the Au Pont de l'Europe bookstore at 17 Rue Vignon with the bookseller Ferdinand Ostertag . In Paris he married the English writer and translator Joyce Phillips . In 1936 he moved to New York; There he found a job with the Brentano’s bookstore chain .

In 1939 he and his former colleague Heinz Schultz opened the art bookstore Wittenborn & Co. (from 1946 Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc. , from 1954 George Wittenborn Inc. ) at 38 E 57th Street in Manhattan (from 1956 1018 Madison Avenue). Wittenborn was also active as a publisher; Together with the artist Robert Motherwell he launched the series Documents of Modern Art and Problems of Contemporary Art (both designed by Paul Rand ), which made the manifestos of the continental avant-garde accessible in translation to an English-speaking audience. In addition, from 1948 onwards, Wittenborn organized smaller exhibitions with European artists in its One-Wall-Gallery . B. with Gottfried Honegger , Gillo Dorfles , Bruno Munari , Piero Dorazio , Hans Haacke or Karel Appel , and sells artist books, a. a. by Ed Ruscha , Lawrence Weiner and Dieter Roth .

With restless bookselling and publishing activity until the end of his life, Wittenborn created a meeting place for emigrants and American intellectuals in the atmosphere of his New York bookshop. His bookstore became an unofficial meeting place for the US art scene and provided an important platform for the transatlantic reception of European art from the interwar and postwar period.

The Art Publishing Award of the Art Libraries Society of North America was renamed the George Wittenborn Award in 1980 in honor of the bookseller and publisher and is given for outstanding art-historical publications.

Publications at Verlag Wittenborn, Schultz (selection)

• Alfredo Benavides Rodriguez : La Arquitectura en el Virreinato del Perú y en la Capitanía General de Chile. 1941
• André Masson : Mythology of Being: A Poem, Eight Pen and Ink Drawings and a Frontispiece. 1942.
• John Rewald : Georges Seurat . 1943.
• Una E. Johnson, Ambroise Vollard Editeur, 1867-1939. An Appreciation and Catalog. 1944.
• Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner : Origins of Modern Sculpture. 1946.
• Claire Goll / Yvan Goll : Love Poems. With 8 Drawings by Marc Chagall . 1947
• Albert Eugene Gallatin : Paintings by Gallatin. 1948
• Jan Tschichold : Designing Books. Planning a book. A Typographer's Composition Rules. 58 Examples by the Author. 1951.
• Robert Motherwell , Aaron Siskind : Modern Artists in America. 1951.
• Paul Rand : Thoughts on Design. Reflections on the art of graphique. Reflections sobre il arte grafico. 1947.
• Victor Hammer : A Theory of Architecture. The Second Chapter from a Platonic Dialog. 1952.
• Thomas Howarth, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement. 1953.
• Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy During the XIV century. 1954.
• Sigfried Giedion : A Decade of Contemporary Architecture. Dix ans d'architecture contemporaine. A decade of modern architecture. 1954.
• Observations of ... Michel Tapié . ed. by Paul and Esther Jenkins, 1956.
• Alice Muehsam : A Brief Survey of Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century for Students of German and Fine Arts. 1959 ( German Readings, 2.)
• The Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt . Ed. Theodore Bowie. 1959.
• Waldemar George, Hilaire Hiler and Structuralism. New Conception of Form-Color. 1960.
• Erwin Rosenthal, The Changing Concept of Reality in Art. 1962.
• Alvar Aalto . Exhibition in the Academy of Arts. Catalog: Herta Elisabeth Killy. 1963.
• Ruth Gurin, American Abstract Artists, 1933-1966. 1966
• Walter J. Strachan, The Artist and the Book in France. The 20th Century livre d'artiste. 1969

Documents of Modern Art (Editor: Robert Motherwell)

• Guillaume Apollinaire : The Cubist Painters (Aesthetic Meditations). 1945 ( Documents of Modern Art, 1)
• Piet Mondrian : Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art 1937, and Other Essays 1941–1943. 1945 ( Documents of Modern Art, 2)
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy : The New Vision. Schultz, 1945 (Documents of Modern Art, 3)
• Louis H. Sullivan : Kindergarten Chats (rev. 1918) and other writings. Schultz, 1947 ( Documents of Modern Art, 4)
• Wassily Kandinsky : Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular. Schultz, 1945 (Documents of Modern Art, 5)
• Jean (Hans) Arp: On My Way. Essays and Poems 1912-1947. Schultz, 1948 ( Documents of Modern Art, 6)
• Max Ernst : Beyond Painting. With other Texts by A. Breton, N. Calas, P. Eluard, G. Ribemont-Dessaignes, T. Tzara ao Schultz, 1948 ( Documents of Modern Art, 7)
• The Dada Painters and Poets. Edited by Robert Motherwell. Schultz, 1948. ( Documents of Modern Art, 8)
• Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler : The Rise of Cubism. Schultz, 1949. ( Documents of Modern Art, 9)
• Marcel Raymond : From Baudelaire to Surrealism. Schultz, 1949. ( Documents of Modern Art, 10)
• Georges Duthuit : The Fauvist (Fauves) Painters. Schultz, 1950. ( Documents of Modern Art, 11)
• Carola Giedion-Welcker : Contemporary Sculpture. An evolution in volume and space. Schultz, 1955. ( Documents of Modern Art, 12)
• Marcel Duchamp : The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, even ; a typographic version by Richard Hamilton of Marcel Duchamps's Green Box, translated by George Heard Hamilton. 1960 ( Documents of Modern Art, 14)
• Paul Klee : Notebook 1: The Thinking Eye. Edited by Jürg Spiller. 1961. ( Documents of Modern Art, 15)
• Kasimir Malewitsch : Essays on Art, 1915–1933. Ed. Troels Andersen. Schultz, 1968 ( Documents of Modern Art, 16)
• Paul Klee : The Nature of Nature. Edited by Jürg Spiller. George Wittenborn, 1973 ( Documents of Modern Art, 17)

Problems of Contemporary Art

• Wolfgang Paalen : Form and Sense. Schultz, 1945. ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 1)
• Herbert Read : The Grass Roots of Art. Lectures on the Social Aspects of Art in an Industrial Age. Schultz, 1947. ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 2)
• Alexander Dorner : The Way Beyond "Art": The Work of Herbert Bayer. Schultz, 1947. ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 3)
• Possibilities 1. An Occasional Review. Eds. John Cage (music), Pierre Chareau (architecture), Robert Motherwell (art) and Harold Rosenberg (writing). Schultz, 1947/1948 ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 4)
• Georges Vantongerloo : Paintings, Sculptures, Reflections. Foreword by Max Bill . Schultz, 1948. ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 5)
• Edgar Kaufmann, Taliesin Drawings. Recent Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright . Schultz, 1952. ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 6)
• Robert Sowers : The Lost Art. A Survey of One Thousand Years of Stained Glass. Schultz, 1954. ( Problems of Contemporary Art, 7)

literature

• Artists' Handbook: George Wittenborn's Guestbook, With 21th Century Additions. Initiated by Ronny van de Velde. Ludion, Gent 2007, ISBN 978-90-5544-719-0 .
• Ernst Fischer (Ed.): Publishers, booksellers & antiquarians from Germany and Austria in emigration after 1933. A biographical handbook. Association of German Antiquaries, 2011, ISBN 978-3-9812223-2-6 .
• Inge Thöns, Herbert Blank: Librairie Au Pont de l'Europe. The first bookstore in exile in Paris. Wallstein, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3325-3

Web links

• George Wittenborn Papers in the Archives of the Museum of Modern Art

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.arlisna.org/about/awards-honors/71-george-wittenborn-award