Hilla von Rebay: The Woman Behind the Guggenheim Collection

The "copper king" Solomon R. Guggenheim favored the old masters -- until he encountered the young German artist Hilla von Rebay in the late 1920s.

His wife Irene had met von Rebay through a local gallery owner. While painting a portrait of Guggenheim, Rebay convinced the tycoon to invest in modern abstract art, which she fervently supported. Through her influence, Guggenheim learned to know and love the artwork of the European avant-garde.

The subsequent collaboration between Rebay and Guggenheim resulted in one of the world's finest collections of early 20th century modern art, or as Rebay called it "non-objective" art.

The Guggenheims became "like my second parents," Rebay said in a rare interview given in 1966 to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. She recalled how the collection's beginnings came about on a trip to Europe with the Guggenheims.

"They came to visit my parents in Baden and that's where he saw some non-objective paintings on the walls," Rebay said. "Ah, he said, that's what I want to collect. And I said, Mr. Guggenheim, you're much too old for that in 15 years. This is not now. You'll only make yourself ridiculous."

But Guggenheim wasn't dissuaded and the core of his collection was born. Rebay proceeded to introduce Guggenheim to Wassily Kandinsky, and with her encouragement, he purchased more than 150 of the artist's works, as well as paintings by other abstract and non-objective artists, including Paul Klee, Rudolf Bauer, Albert Gleizes, Léger, and László Moholy-Nagy.

Determined to become an artist

For Rebay, born a baroness into a German noble family in 1890, it was very clear to her from early on that she would become an artist. Her father, a Prussian general, was strict, though.

"When I told my parents I didn't want to be a musician but a professional painter, my father said: I'll allow you to paint until you are 18, but then you're my daughter, you go out and finish," Rebay said. "No artist in our family." But she was very strong willed and went on to study art in Paris, Munich and Berlin.

She had some successful exhibitions in Germany and France, but her breakthrough came after she moved to the United States in 1927. Her paintings sold well among the wealthy New Yorkers and led to her relationship with the Guggenheims.

Rebay maintained her contact to European artists, first and foremost Bauer, whom she had met in Berlin in 1916. She later became his most significant mentor and helped him immigrate to the United States during World War Two.

Wright built the museum "for and around" Rebay

In 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established and Rebay became its first curator and director. She was also the driving force behind the idea of a museum to house the collection of modern art.

Guggenheim said she should find an architect and in 1943, Rebay contacted Frank Lloyd Wright. She perceived him to be a kindred spirit and to design the museum of her dreams, "a temple to non-objectivity," she called it.

"I explained to him what I wanted, a museum that goes slowly up. No staircase, no interruptions," Rebay said. "He said: do you have a design? I gave him a design." The result can be seen on New York's Fifth Avenue.

For Wright, the museum was Rebay's baby.

"This whole building has been built for you and around you, whether you know it or not," Wright wrote to her in 1945.

The museum with its legendary rotunda finally opened in 1959. By that time, Wright and Guggenheim had already passed away and Rebay had fallen out with Guggenheim's heirs and been expelled from her position. She was allegedly difficult and bossy and never set foot in the museum she helped create.

The Guggenheim Museum is a building that was architecturally ahead of its time, as was Rebay.

"Already as a little child, I was always forward. I would like to live until 2004," Rebay said in the Smithsonian interview.

Rebay died virtually forgotten in Connecticut in 1967. It took almost 40 years until her work as an artist was compiled and presented -- in an exhibition in 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum called "Art of Tomorrow."