Käte Berl was born in 1908 to a Jewish family in Vienna, where she trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule. After graduation, she discovered enamelling, which became her medium of choice; she is best known for popularising its use in three-dimensional works, working with the traditional Limoges technique as well as experimenting with modern approaches such as grisaille and plique-à-jour. Escaping Nazi persecution she immigrated to Britain in 1938, where she was involved with the Austrian émigré cabaret theatre 'Das Laterndl', designing costumes and a logo, before moving to the USA in 1939.
Artist Käte Berl was born in Vienna, Austria Hungary (now Austria) in 1908. She showed an interest in fine art from a young age and attended youth art classes with Franz Cižek at age nine in 1917. At 14 she wrote, illustrated, and published her own children’s book entitled Ein frohes Jahr [Happy New Year]. Berl pursued formal art training at the Kunstgewerbeschule, (University of Applied Arts) in Vienna, studying costume design between 1919 to 1925. After graduating, however, she encountered enamelling for the first time and decided it was her medium of choice. She began with the traditional Limoges enamel technique but later experimented with more modern forms such as grisaille and plique-à-jour.
In 1938, she fled rising Nazism and anti-Semitic legislation in Austria and immigrated to London. Here she was involved with the Austrian émigré cabaret theatre Das Laterndl which opened in 1939 in the Austrian Centre in W2 (before relocating later to Eaton Avenue, NW3), where she designed costumes for two productions during 1939, as well as a logo for the programme cover. Berl then immigrated further to the USA before 1940, where she remained for the rest of her life. In 1946 she married Fritz Littauer. Here her work began to receive national attention when it was featured in the prestigious 1948 Syracuse Ceramic National show. Berl would be included in seven more iterations of the annual exhibition, in 1949, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1958, and 1970. She received a retrospective exhibition of her work at the National Design Centre in New York in 1965. She also lectured for various institutions in the USA, including the New York Board of Education, the American Education Council, and the University of Long Island, where she taught make-up.
Berl is best known for popularising the use of enamel in three-dimensional works and pioneered embedding enamels into sculptural forms and vessels which, when lit from behind or from within, produced an effect akin to that of stained glass windows. This innovation in technique and medium gained her new prominence. She pushed this experimentation further in the 1970s as she began to create works on a monumental scale. One of her largest creations, at more than two metres high, was City at Night, which reflected her daring and desire to push the boundaries of the medium. She also wrote a series of books explaining enamelling techniques, the first of which was published in 1950 with fellow Viennese émigré, Mizi Otten (also a renowned enamelist and with whom she founded an enamel workshop in New York), entitled The Art of Enameling; or, Enameling Can Be Fun, one of the first 'how-to' books on the subject. In the late 1960s she also designed special props for 'Tomorrow', a production by the HB Studio theatre company in New York, founded in 1945 by Austrian émigré, actor and director Herbert Berghof. Berl was a regular magazine contributor, writing technical articles for Ceramic Monthly from 1958 onwards; she also contributed to Crafts for the Aging, published by the American Craftsmen’s Council in 1962. She contributed to Glass on Metal in June 1988, where she explained her attraction to working with enamel: ‘The art of enamelling is ancient yet eternally new [...] Each piece I do is a stepping stone to the next and fulfilment will never come. I want enamel to express every idea I am feeling’ (The Enamel Arts Foundation, https://www.enamelarts.org/kathe-berl/). In 1991 her work was featured in a group exhibition The Alchemy of Enamel at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Gallery in New Jersey; the New York Times reviewer observed how 'Kathe Berl achieves depth on a flat plane. Her 'Fireworks' are circles of pierced metal placed over a tinted mirror. Color scintillates from the enameled metal and reflective 'sparks' exploding through the holes' (Betty Freudenheim, 24 February 1991). Berl died in New York in 1994. Her estate is held in the Austrian Archive for Exile Studies at the Literaturhaus in Vienna; in the UK archive material relating to Das Laterndl is held at the Martin Miller Archive, School of Advanced Studies, London University and at the Wiener Library, London.