Wittenborn, George, 1905-1974

Collector, art dealer; New York, N.Y.

George Wittenborn (1905-1974) was a collector and art dealer from New York, N.Y.

George Wittenborn, together with Heinz Shultz, founded Wittenborn & Schultz on East 57th Street in 1941. This bookshop became an important intellectual center in New York, where the refugee Surrealists, art dealers of the day, architects, designers, and young Abstract Expressionists all gathered. After Schultz's death, Wittenborn moved the store to 1018 Madison Avenue in 1956, and renamed it Wittenborn and Company. There, the Wittenborns displayed artwork on all available wall (and ceiling) space, calling it the One-Wall Gallery. It became a venue for both prominent and emerging artists, with shows ranging from André Masson's etchings to the early work of Hans Haacke, who had his first show there.

In addition to selling monographs, exhibition catalogues, and artists' books, Wittenborn set about publishing books he deemed important, as he had throughout his career. Certainly the most important of his publishing enterprises was the Documents of Modern Art. The compilation was a venture begun in 1943 in collaboration with Robert Motherwell, who served as general editor, and Bernard Karpel, Librarian at The Museum of Modern Art, who served as documentary editor and compiled many of the series' bibliographies. The groundbreaking series specialized in making available in English major European texts by modern artists and about modern art.