Kate Steinitz

Kate Steinitz (2 August 1889 - 7 April 1975), informally known as “the Mama of Dada,” was a German-American artist, preserver and collector of Bauhaus and Dadaist art, promoter, and, librarian.

[3] She attending drawing classes with Käthe Kollwitz and later the "Malschule für Frauen" (Women's Painting School) run by Lovis Corinth.

"[7] Steinitz also began to write for the newspaper the Hannoverscher Kurier, and for various journals by Ullstein Verlag, using her own name as well as under the pseudonyms "Annette Nobody" and "Mia Meyer.

"[8] In 1936, the Steinitz family immigrated to New York City to escape Nazi persecution, after having been told by government authorities that she could no longer write for German publications.

[6] She also began working as a book scout for Jacob Zeitlin, who was helping collector Elmer Belt build his Leonardo da Vinci collection.

And though she had no formal academic credentials or training in librarianship, he appreciated her sophistication, intelligence, language skills, wide network of friendships abroad, and knowledge of art and books.

In 1958, she published an important bibliography of the Treatise on Painting and in 1969 she was invited to deliver the annual Lettura Vinciana in Vinci, Italy, the highest honor for contributors to the field of Leonardo studies.

Despite her professional turn towards scholarship, Steinitz's artistic, bohemian, and fun-loving side remained fully intact during her Los Angeles years.

Both European and American art world figures called on her in her West Los Angeles apartment, where she had important work created by the artistic luminaries of her youth including El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Auguste Rodin, Otto Nebel, Franz Marc, and others.

Her friends in Los Angeles included members of the German-Jewish émigré community, contemporary innovators like Buckminster Fuller, and people across the spectrum of the art world.

Contributions by Elmer Belt, Justin Bier, Bates Lowry, Jacob Zeitlin, Peter Selz, Jean Sutherland Boggs, Ladislao Reti, Weiland Schmeid, Robert Haas, Walter Hopps, J.M.