This collection is organized into 6 series.
Ilse Getz (1917-1992) was born in Nuremberg, Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1933. She studied at the Art Students League with George Grosz and Morris Kantor and at the Ozenfant School. Getz was a collage and construction artist active from the 1950s through the 1980. She exhibited at several galleries in New York City including the Bertha Schaefer Gallery and Rosenberg Gallery.
During her childhood, Ilse Getz (nee Bechhold) had been uprooted both from home and country. She was first displaced in 1929, when she was sent to Hamburg to live with her sister after her father died by suicide. In 1933, Ilse and her sister left Nazi Germany, and traveled to Italy, Spain, Cuba, and Mexico. Ilse joined immediate family in New York. In 1937, Ilse married lawyer David Getz and settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Three years later she had a child and became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
In 1942, while visiting her sister in Mexico, Getz created her first oil painting. Upon returning to New York, Ilse continued her artistic exploration and studied with George Grosz and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League. By 1945, Getz had already held her first solo exhibition at the Norlyst Gallery in New York.
Getz traveled extensively throughout her life, incorporating the experiences in her work. During 1947-1948, she traveled and worked in Europe, visiting Switzerland, France, Spain and Portugal among other countries before retiring for four months in Guaruja, Brazil. She destroyed most of the artwork created during that period and returned to New York City.
During the summer of 1956, Getz taught and exhibited at the Positano Art Workshop in Italy along with Piero Dorazio. She repeated the experience two years later. In 1958, Getz married her second husband, artist Manoucher Yektai. The following year, Getz and Yektai went to Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York after having received fellowships to the artists' community.
In 1960, Getz was commissioned by Richard Barr to create the set for Eugene Ionesco's play,
Getz participated in national and international exhibitions and in solo and group shows. Her collages and constructions incorporate items such as dolls, toys, birds, eggs, playing cards, and game boards. In 1978, retrospective exhibitions of Getz's work were held at the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York and in her native city at the Kunsthalle Nürnberg. Retrospective exhibitions were also held in 1980 at the Goethe House and Alex Rosenberg Gallery.
Later in life, Getz suffered from advanced Alzheimer's disease. In 1992, Gibson Danes, fearful that he would no longer be able to properly care for his wife, took both his life and that of Ilse Getz. They were found dead in their garage from acute carbon monoxide toxicity after breathing the fumes of their idling car.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
The papers were donated in 2001 by Patricia Getz-Gentle, the daughter of Ilse Getz.
Ilse Getz Papers, 1928-1999. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The collection was processed and a finding aid prepared by Carla De Luise in 2006.
The papers of collage artist Ilse Getz measure 3.4 linear feet and date from 1928 through 1999, with the bulk of the papers dating from circa 1947-circa 1990. Her personal life is reflected through biographical material including a genealogy of the Bechhold family; marriage and death certificates; and writings that include journals, artist statement, poems and notes. The collection contains letters from friends, artists, collectors, and museum and art gallery representatives; exhibition files; and printed material relating to Getz's exhibitions. Also found are photographs, slides and transparencies of artwork.
Biographical material includes curriculum vitae, chronology of Ilse Getz's life, list of collectors, certificate of naturalization and passport, obituaries and death records for Ilse Getz and her husband Gibson Danes, memorial service program and certificate of devise, and a genealogy of the Bechhold family. This series also houses a scrapbook of clippings and exhibition announcements that document Getz's early artistic career. Researchers should note that some of the information in the scrapbook can also be found elsewhere in the collection, primarily in sereies 3 and 5 and additional material can be and additional material is found in series 4.
This series contains personal and professional letters written to Ilse Getz from friends, artists, museum and gallery representatives, and collectors. Personal letters from artists and gallery representatives are from Kenneth Armitage, Varujan Boghosian, Ludwig Charell, Virginia and Piero Dorazio, Theodoros Stamos, Mark Tobey, and Manoucher Yektai, among others. Professional letters from artists and museum and gallery representatives are included from Carol Anthony, Roy Davis, Louise Tolliver Deutschman, S. Lane Faison, Sigrid Freundorfer, Curt Heigl, Paul Jenkins, Jirko Jirí Chmelar, Hans Namuth, Pierre Restany, and Judith Rothschild among others. Also included are season's greeting cards from Sonia Delauney and Larry Aldrich. This series also houses letters pertaining to the 1978 retrospective exhibition
Letters to Ilse Getz
Letters to Ilse Getz
Letters to Ilse Getz
Letters to Ilse Getz
Letters to Ilse Getz
Letters to Ilse Getz
Exhibition files may contain any or all of the following: sales and loan records; letters; photographs; publicity material; and price lists. Included in the printed material are announcements, catalogs, and clippings. Financial and publicity material relating to exhibitions are located at the beginning of the series. Individual files on exhibitions are listed chronologically. Some files may contain multiple exhibition information. Additional material can be found in series 2.
Writings contain an artist statement, notes, journals, poems by Getz and Barbara Guest, and a transcribed interview from 1977 of Ilse Getz conducted by Carl Heigl. Also found is an illustrated travel journal created in 1947 in which Getz recorded her experiences while visiting Spain. Included in the material is a journal from Getz's youth in which friends and acquaintances wrote notes and drawings to her. Writings by others include a statement by Paul Jenkins titled, "Thoughts around Ilse." This series is arranged according to material type and chronologically.
Printed material contains announcements, invitations, solo and group exhibition catalogs, and clippings pertaining to Getz's artistic career. Also included are posters for exhibitions in which Getz participated with a monograph of the
Included within the material are an acquisitions report from Dartmouth College Museums & Galleries and an annual report from the Wadsworth Atheneum, which list the gift of Getz's work to the institutions.
Also found are group exhibition catalogs including
Oversized material housed in box 4, folder 5
Oversized material can be found in box 4, folders 6-8
Oversized material housed in OV 5
This series contains photographs, slides and transparencies of Ilse Getz's artwork. Images of artwork primarily consist of Polariods. Also included are slides and negatives of Ilse Getz in her Newtown, Connecticut studio as well as a photograph of her New York City studio and apartment. Also included is a photograph of Getz's friend and fellow artist, Theodoros Stamos.