HILLA REBAY (1890-1967)
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Biography • Hilla Rebay (1890-1967)
Hilla Rebay dedicated most of her time from the mid-1930s until Solomon Guggenheim’s death in 1949 to the establishment of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). Rebay focused on the promotion of abstraction in the United States and supported numerous artists in New York and in Europe. With the end of her position at the museum in 1949, Hilla Rebay had time to focus on her own art work again resulting in an energetic body of work that celebrates the joy of an artist back in her studio. Hilla Rebay received much deserved attention by the Guggenheim Museum with the exhibition Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim in 2005 and the accompanying catalogue published by Guggenheim Museum Publications.
Hildegard Rebay von Ehrenwiesen (Baroness Hilla von Rebay) was born in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine to a German aristocratic family. Her father was an officer in the Prussian army. Rebay showed an early aptitude for art and she studied at the Cologne Kunstgewerbeschule during the academic year 1908/09. She then attended the Academie Julian in Paris from 1909 until 1910, where she received traditional training in landscape, portraiture, genre and history painting. Rebay then moved to Munich in 1910 where she began to develop her interest in modern art.
Rebay participated in her first exhibition at the Cologne Kunstverein in 1912. In March 1913, Rebay exhibited alongside Archipenko, Brâncuși, Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Gleizes, and Diego Rivera at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. This experience, however, was disheartening for Rebay who seemed to judge her own work as inadequate. In 1915 Rebay met another fellow Alsatian Hans (Jean) Arp in Zurich. This meeting was extremely influential upon Rebay's artistic taste since it was through Arp that she was introduced to the non-objective modern art works of Kandinsky, Klee, Franz Marc, Chagall and Rudolf Bauer. Arp gave Rebay a copy of Kandinsky’s seminal treatise On the Spiritual in Art and the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (both first published in 1912). He also introduced her to the Dada movement in Zurich and to Herwarth Walden, who had founded the influential gallery Der Sturm in Berlin. Rebay became an active participant in the European avant-garde and took part in several group exhibitions. Rebay settled in Berlin in 1917.
In January 1927, Rebay immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. She would become an American citizen in 1947 and drop the von from her name. An avid art collector, she became a friend and confidante of Solomon R. Guggenheim, and helped advise his art purchases. In particular, she encouraged him to purchase non-objective art by Rudolf Bauer and Kandinsky. In her capacity as an advisor, Rebay was key in supporting abstract art in America as the co-founder and first director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She was a key figure in advising Solomon R. Guggenheim to collect non-objective art, a collection that would later form the basis of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum collection, and she was also influential in selecting Frank Lloyd Wright to design the current Guggenheim museum, which is now known as a modernist icon in New York City.
These purchases later founded the basis of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which opened in 1939 in a showroom located at 24 East 54th Street. The first exhibition, entitled Art of Tomorrow, opened on June 1, 1939. Rebay served as the director of the museum until 1952. In addition to supporting Bauer and Kandinsky, Rebay also exhibited work of many New York based artists including Irene Rice Pereira, Balcomb and Gertrude Green, John Sennhauser, Charles Green Shaw, and Jean Xceron among others.
In June 1943 Rebay wrote to the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright to commission a "museum-temple" to house the growing collection. While the new museum was being built, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting moved to a townhouse located at 1071 Fifth Avenue where Rebay continued to organize exhibitions. The new museum opened on October 21, 1959, as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Rebay was acknowledged to have excellent taste in modern art. She continued to paint and achieved some recognition for her abstract works. Although she was long a confidante to Solomon Guggenheim, others in the family found her personally difficult, especially his niece Peggy. After Solomon Guggenheim died in 1949, the family expelled her from the board of directors.
When the museum was completed, Rebay was not invited for the opening. She never set foot in the museum she helped create. Embittered, Rebay retreated from public life and spent her final years at her estate in Westport, Connecticut.
Following Rebay's death in 1967, part of her extensive personal collection of art was given to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as the Hilla Rebay Collection, which includes works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Albert Gleizes and Kurt Schwitters.
2004, the German documentary filmmaker Sigrid Faltin made the film The Guggenheim and the Baroness: The Story of Hilla Rebay.
In 2005, a companion book Die Baroness und das Guggenheim Hilla von Rebay – Eine Deutsche Künstlerin in New York was published.
In 2005, nearly forty years after her death, the Guggenheim Museum honored Rebay with a special exhibition dedicated to her role in the foundation and her collection, entitled Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim (May 20 – August 10, 2005). It opened in New York and traveled to Europe.
The Hilla von Rebay Foundation was established in her name at the Guggenheim Museum to promote non-objective art.
The Hilla Rebay International Fellowship was founded in 2001 to offer a current graduate student the opportunity to undertake a paid rotating position at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice.
In 2014, Rebay was depicted in Bauer, a play about the life and art of Rudolf Bauer and his relationship with Rebay. The play had its world premiere at San Francisco Playhouse.