Oral History Interview with Ronald A. Kleemann, 2009 Oct. 11-12
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Oral history interview with Ronald A. Kleemann, 2009 Oct. 11-12 Funding for this interview was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Ronald A. Kleemann on October 11 and 12, 2009. The interview took place at the artist's home in Valatie, New York, and was conducted by Judith Olch Richards for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Funding for this interview was provided by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Ronald A. Kleemann and Judith Olch Richards have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview JUDITH RICHARDS: All right. Are you comfortable? Okay. This is Judith Richards interviewing Ron [Ronald] Kleemann in Valatie, New York, on October 11th, 2009, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, disc one. Also present for part of the interview is Kleemann's wife Sally [and her daughter Tracey Houlihan]. I wanted to start at the beginning today and ask you about your family, as far back as is meaningful to you. RONALD A. KLEEMANN: Okay. MS. RICHARDS: Your grandparents, if you knew them, where they came from, your parents. MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah. MS. RICHARDS: When and where you were born. We will go on from there. MR. KLEEMANN: All right. I was born on July 24, 1937. My mother's name was Corrine Kleemann. MS. RICHARDS: Corrine? MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah. MS. RICHARDS: C-O-R-I-N-N-E? MR. KLEEMANN: C-O-R-R-I-N-E. Father's name is Walter [Carl] Kleemann. MS. RICHARDS: What was your mother's maiden name? MR. KLEEMANN: Corrine [Elanor] Falk, F-A-L-K. And she was of Swedish parentage. MS. RICHARDS: Was she born in the United States? MR. KLEEMANN: I think - she was born in St. Louis [MO], I think. And just after my grandparents - that would be my grandparents came over here [to America] from- MS. RICHARDS: The Falks. MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah, Albert [changed from Algot] Falk and his wife [Anna Holmstedt] - I always called her Mormor. That is grandmother in Swedish. [Laughs.] MS. RICHARDS: How do you spell that? MR. KLEEMANN: M-O-R-M-O-R. MS. RICHARDS: Where in Sweden did they come from? MR. KLEEMANN: Goteborg. MS. RICHARDS: Oh, mm-hmm. [Affirmative.] And they came directly to St. Louis? MR. KLEEMANN: No, actually my grandfather came over here to get a job first before he sent for his wife. And he - I don't know the year that they came. But it was well before I was born. And he was - he stopped at Watertown and worked on a farm there for a while. And then he, you know, kept getting jobs and made enough money, ended up working for in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for a brass foundry, American Brass or something like that. And then he sent for my mother - my grandmother. She came over and then they had my mother, Corrine. MS. RICHARDS: So what did your grandfather do for a living? MR. KLEEMANN: He worked where they melt brass down. And he turned those big kettles full of molten brass letting the brass run into the molds where it cooled. [Laughs.] That kind of stuff. A dangerous job. MS. RICHARDS: Did they live near you when you were growing up? MR. KLEEMANN: No, Kenosha, Wisconsin. MS. RICHARDS: Oh, I see. MR. KLEEMANN: We were in Bay City, Michigan. MS. RICHARDS: So they initially came to - they came to St. Louis? MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah. MS. RICHARDS: And then they moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin? MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah. MS. RICHARDS: And what about your father's side of the family - your grandparents on your father's side? MR. KLEEMANN: They came from - I guess they came from Germany, you know, getting out in time for the Second World War or something like that or maybe the First World War. I can't remember which. MS. RICHARDS: But you were born in 1937? MR. KLEEMANN: Thirty-seven. So I don't want to start lying here. I am just telling a story. [Laughs.] MS. RICHARDS: [Laughs.] So your grandparents Kleemann, they were - MR. KLEEMANN: Who I never - I never knew them. MS. RICHARDS: I see. But your father was born in the U.S.? Or was he born in Germany? MR. KLEEMANN: Yes, in the U.S. MS. RICHARDS: So they got here before your father was born. MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah, yeah. I guess they got out of Germany and stuff was happening there or starting to happen and just thought they had better get out of there. MS. RICHARDS: Do you know where they lived in Germany? MR. KLEEMANN: No, I don't. MS. RICHARDS: When they came here, where did they first arrive? MR. KLEEMANN: Bay City, Michigan. MS. RICHARDS: Oh, I see. MR. KLEEMANN: And they had a dry goods store. I don't know - what do you call it? A store, like a regular corner store. And they had five children there - my father, his brothers, Albert and Carl, and two daughters - I can't remember their names - that both died fairly early in their lives. And that is the Kleemann part. [Kleemann later clarifies that his father Walter and his siblings were adopted by the Kleemann family.] MS. RICHARDS: I see. So he ran this business and your father grew up in Bay City with his brother. And how did your parents meet? MR. KLEEMANN: How did they meet? I think they met through a deaf-and-dumb cousin to my father's side of the family, different name entirely, Anna Brosseau. MS. RICHARDS: How do you spell that - Brosseau? MR. KLEEMANN: B-R-O-S-S-E-A-U, something like that. And both these people were married, Anna and her husband, Senefile. He called himself Senny. And they were both deaf and dumb. And so they talked with their hands. They sometimes could say things like, you know, but kind of weird sounding when it came out, you know. But I could understand them and my parents could understand them. [Laughs.] So that is that. How did I get on that? Oh, that is how my mother met my father through those people. MS. RICHARDS: How did they meet through those people? Why did they meet through those people? MR. KLEEMANN: I can't remember. [Laughs.] MS. RICHARDS: Well, it is probably not important. So they - but they lived in Bay City as soon as they were married? MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah, yeah. And she came from Kenosha to Bay City. MS. RICHARDS: Now, you said something earlier about your grandfather [KLEEMANN's great-grandfather was an Italian-trained muralist in Sweden] being interested in art. MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah. MS. RICHARDS: And that is your grandfather Falk. MR. KLEEMANN: Grandfather Falk. MS. RICHARDS: And what was that - what did you - MR. KLEEMANN: Not him, his wife was the daughter of the artist. MS. RICHARDS: Corrine? MR. KLEEMANN: No, Anna. MS. RICHARDS: Oh, I see. MR. KLEEMANN: Her father was my great-grandfather who was the artist. [Laughs.] [Inaudible.] MS. RICHARDS: And he was an artist in Sweden? MR. KLEEMANN: In Sweden. He was educated in art in Italy. He was taught to do - you know, when they paint the tops of ceilings in - [inaudible] - and stuff like that. He learned how to do that and then he came back to Goteborg and Stockholm and painted insides of the buildings. MS. RICHARDS: How did you learn about that - about his work? MR. KLEEMANN: My grandmother told me. She - MS. RICHARDS: That is Corrine? MR. KLEEMANN: No, that is Anna. MS. RICHARDS: I'm sorry. I am confused about - who is Anna then? MR. KLEEMANN: Anna is my grandmother MS. RICHARDS: Anna Falk? MR. KLEEMANN: Anna Falk. MS. RICHARDS: Is Corrine's daughter? MR. KLEEMANN: No, Corrine I my mother, Anna is her mother. MS. RICHARDS: I see. MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah. MS. RICHARDS: So you learned about this artist from Anna? MR. KLEEMANN: From Anna. At that time, I was even messing around with drawing and stuff. MS. RICHARDS: So I had mentioned - I guess I asked you if you lived near your grandparents. But you visited them, so you learned about that on visits. MR. KLEEMANN: Yeah, we would go almost yearly, maybe two or three times sometimes. Sometimes I would go with my mother on the train to Chicago, then up to Kenosha on the Jitney bus or Jitney train or whatever you want to - and then we would stay there for a couple of weeks and then come back again and then go on again next Christmas maybe. The other way around, too. They traveled to us, also. But she was a nasty woman, my grandmother, because I would draw things for her and I would give them to her and she said you will never be as good as your grandfather. So that gave me something to work with. [Laughs.] I will, I will. So you know, I can even show you. I will just grab a couple of things and show you his picture. My grandmother was never forthcoming with, you know, the process or anything like that. MS. RICHARDS: This painting of the ceilings and what they did. Yeah. So going back to when you were born, and your brother, Carl.