Hilla Rebay (also Hildegard Anna Augusta Elisabeth Rebay von Ehrenwiesen)

Hilla Rebay was a cosmopolitan German artist who is now best known as the art advisor of Solomon R. Guggenheim. She fundamentally shaped Guggenheim’s pioneering collection through her artistic connections and advocacy for nonobjective art, and eventually conceived of a New York City museum to house his remarkable holdings.

Rebay developed a remarkable artistic talent from an early age and, with her parents’ support, pursued fine art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Cologne and the Académie Julian in Paris before traveling to Munich. When she returned to Paris in the fall of 1912, she quickly became part of a network of artists, dealers, and collectors through the intervention of Félix Fénéon, art critic and artistic director of Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

During World War I, Rebay continued to move to different cities and countries. At the end of 1915, Rebay traveled to Zurich where she met the artist Hans (Jean) Arp; through him, she was exposed to recent works by Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Franz Marc, among others. She also became involved in the activities of the Dada group in Zurich, and exhibited with them at the Galerie Dada in May 1917. Always striving to have her work represented among her peers in the avant-garde, Rebay relocated in May 1918 to Berlin, where she exhibited at the Berlin Secession, the Freie Secession, and Novembergruppe. She also began a romantic relationship with the German painter Rudolf Bauer, who would prove crucial for her development as an artist and art advisor.

Rebay moved to New York in 1927. Soon after her arrival in the United States, she settled in a studio apartment in Carnegie Hall that she kept until 1953, where she supported herself by painting portraits for members of New York’s high society. Through this work she quickly made important social connections in the city and was offered a solo show at the Marie Sterner Gallery, where Solomon R. and Irene Guggenheim bought a collage. In October 1928, Solomon commissioned Rebay to paint his portrait. During the sittings, Rebay shared with Guggenheim her views on nonobjective art, and encouraged him to begin a collection. Guggenheim then entrusted Rebay to start purchasing works for him during her frequent trips to Europe. Rebay relied on Bauer’s help to acquire artworks in Germany, while she developed her connections in Paris thanks to her preexisting relationship with the artist Albert Gleizes and Fénéon, both of whom helped Rebay to build a robust artistic network. Through them, she made connections with a number of artists whose work she hoped Guggenheim would buy: Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, László Moholy-Nagy, and Piet Mondrian. Rebay also built her own personal collection, which included work by these same artists, as well as pieces by Bauer, Gleizes, and Kandinsky. In July 1930, Rebay facilitated a meeting between herself, Guggenheim, and Kandinsky, who was teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, and purchased several of the artist’s works for both Guggenheim’s collection as well as her own.

After she returned to New York in the 1930s, Rebay advocated for nonobjective art through her work for the Guggenheims. As part of her proselytizing efforts, she organized many traveling exhibitions of Guggenheim’s collection (Charleston, 1936; Philadelphia, 1937; and Baltimore, 1939), as well as distributed stipends and scholarships to artists who produced nonobjective work. In 1933, Guggenheim considered funding a museum to house his blossoming collection. He established an eponymous foundation in 1937 to preserve and interpret his collection, but it was not until June 1939 that the Museum of Non-Objective Painting opened at 24 East Fifty-Fourth Street in New York, with Rebay as its curator. The inaugural show, Art of Tomorrow, featured fourteen works by Rebay, as well as many works by Bauer and Kandinsky. In June 1943 Rebay began to make plans for a permanent home for Guggenheim’s collection and contacted the architect Frank Lloyd Wright about designing the structure.

By 1952 Rebay resigned from her role as director of the museum due to ill health and conflicts with museum trustees over her vision. She spent the last years of her life at her homes in Connecticut and New Hampshire, separated from the developments of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which eventually opened its doors in 1959 in a newly designed building by Wright on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Before her death in 1967, Rebay established the Hilla von Rebay Foundation to promote interest in non-objective art. She gifted many of the works in her collection by artists such as Bauer, Alexander Calder, Delaunay, Gleizes, Kandinsky, Klee, Léger, Marc, Mondrian, and Kurt Schwitters to her foundation and bequeathed several others to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.