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Guggenheim Museum
- Exhibitions -
Art of Tomorrow:
Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim
Overview
The German-born Hilla Rebay (1890–1967) was
a prolific artist who
obtained a solid academic training as a portrait and figure painter.
Having initially secured portrait commissions in order to make a
living, Rebay would later devote herself to non-objective
painting—art
without representational links to the material world—which
she
considered to be the most superior form of art. Belief in the
spirituality of art and its educational powers, as well as the force of
intuition, guided her throughout her life.
Thanks especially to her friends the artists Hans Richter and Jean Arp,
Rebay explored new and radical directions in painting in the 1910s and
early 1920s. Arp gave Rebay a copy of Vasily Kandinsky's seminal
treatise On the Spiritual in Art (1911) and the
almanac Der Blaue Reiter.
He introduced her to the Dada movement in Zurich and to Herwarth
Walden, the influential owner of the avant-garde Galerie Der Sturm in
Berlin. There, as an active participant in the avant-garde, Rebay
exhibited on several occasions and had the opportunity to create
woodcuts for covers of the gallery's journals and catalogues. At
Galerie Der Sturm, Rebay also met the artist Rudolf Bauer, whom she
considered to be the foremost exponent of non-objective painting, and
entered into a long but often difficult relationship with him. Also
thanks to Arp, with whom Rebay had an intimate relationship before
meeting Bauer, she discovered paper collage, a medium in which she
would particularly excel. This medium enabled her to handle line more
freely and to experiment with rhythm and the balance of forms.
Throughout her long career from the 1910s through the 1960s, Rebay
exhibited in museums and commercial galleries in Europe and the United
States and produced a large array of both figurative and non-objective
works, many on view in this exhibition. Her figurative works include
formal portraits, such as those of Solomon R. Guggenheim
(1861–1949),
Arp, Bauer, and Richter; early drawings and watercolors of dancers and
musicians; as well as intricate and lively collages of female figures
and exotic characters. Dance and music were particularly meaningful to
Rebay, and she often chose musical titles for her works. Although
figurative works provided Rebay with a source of income in her early
years in New York, it was non-objective art that she preferred and to
which she would dedicate the rest of her life. Non-objective works in
the exhibition include small, dynamic watercolors, complex collages
comprised of a multitude of cut and pasted papers, and vibrant
paintings—all conveying Rebay's singular commitment to
creations free
of the empirical world and dedicated to the infinite possibilities of
pure color, line, and space within a spiritual cosmos.
After Rebay moved to America in January 1927, she was commissioned by
Guggenheim to paint his portrait. At this time, she began her steadfast
mission to encourage the wealthy industrialist to collect the art she
so fervently supported. Rebay introduced him to Kandinsky, and with her
encouragement, he purchased over 150 of the artist's works, in addition
to many others by abstract and non-objective artists for his growing
collection of modern art, including Bauer, Robert Delaunay, Albert
Gleizes, Fernand Léger, László
Moholy-Nagy. Exhibitions of Guggenheim's
collection were organized by Rebay in Charleston, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore. In 1937 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established
for the "promotion and encouragement and education in art and the
enlightenment of the public," and Guggenheim began to envision the
construction of a museum to house his magnificent collection. In 1939
he rented a building on East 54th Street in Manhattan, which Rebay
transformed into an exhibition space for the Museum of Non-Objective
Painting (the name of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum until 1952). It
was there that much of Guggenheim's collection was introduced to a New
York audience for the first time, and the museum became a great success
with New York's art community, particularly the young generation of
American abstract artists. As a "temple" to non-objectivity, the Museum
of Non-Objective Painting—at 54th Street and at its next
location in a
townhouse at 1071 Fifth Avenue—offered a special atmosphere
in which to
view art.
A fiercely independent woman of impressive energy and determination,
Rebay organized ambitious exhibitions at the museum and around the
United States, purchased numerous works for the ever-expanding
collection, gave lectures, wrote essays, published and distributed
catalogues and study prints in order to encourage knowledge and
understanding of non-objective painting, and also supported artists
through funds and scholarships. In 1943 Rebay contacted architect Frank
Lloyd Wright—in whom she perceived a kindred spirit in
matters of art
and spirituality—to design the museum of her dreams, a
"temple" to
non-objectivity. The building would finally open in October 1959, ten
years after Guggenheim's death, just six months after Wright's own
death, and several years after Rebay had resigned from the museum.
Rebay described Guggenheim as a spiritually gifted collector. The
extraordinary collaboration between them resulted in one of the world's
finest collections of early twentieth-century modernism and attests to
the insight and prescience of its founders. This accomplishment was
expressed above all through Art of Tomorrow,
the 1939 exhibition that inaugurated the Museum of Non-Objective
Painting. The present exhibition features important European and
American paintings—including works by Bauer, Penrod
Centurion, John
Ferren, Juan Gris, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Léger, Moholy-Nagy,
Otto
Nebel, Ben Nicholson, Pablo Picasso, Rolph Scarlett, Georges Valmier,
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, and Jean
Xceron—that were collected by Guggenheim under Rebay's
guidance and
included in the Art of Tomorrow
—Karole Vail, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, and Brigitte Salmen
catalogue published in 1939.
© 2005 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum |