Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic New York had seen nothing like it. In 1939, an exhibition titled Art of Tomorrow opened on East 54th Street. Like portals to another realm, abstract paintings by artists including Rudolf Bauer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson and others were hung close to the floor, the air was thick with incense and the music of Bach and Beethoven softened the roar of the traffic outside. The new gallery, grandly called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, was the first iteration of what was, in 1952, to become the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum. The exhibition was curated by one of the artists, who also happened to be the museum’s first director: Baroness Hildegard Anna Augusta Elisabeth Rebay von Ehrenwiesen — better known as Hilla Rebay. Who was this German aristocrat, who was so instrumental in shaping one of the great American institutions? Born in 1890 in Strasbourg, then part of Germany, from an early age she was drawn to both the possibilities of art and spiritualism. After studying in Cologne, in 1909 she moved to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, one of the few European art schools that had, since its opening in 1868, nurtured the talents of female artists. A wonderful photograph of the baroness at the academy inscribed “La Parisienne!” shows her seated, smiling, at her easel, an enormous palette in her left hand, her hair piled high, dressed in a grubby smock and modern boots. The following year, she enrolled in Munich’s forward-thinking Debschitz-Schule, which counted among its teachers Paul Klee. The German city was host to a generation of artists keen to shake off the dusty shackles of the 19th century. In 1911, a group of them, led by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter, formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), to explore the spiritual and emotional possibilities of art via expressionism, abstraction — which they termed “non-objective” — and symbolism. The baroness drank it up. Over the next few years, Rebay lived, worked and exhibited in Paris and Zurich. With the first world war wreaking its devastation across Europe, myriad artists, their faith in the old order destroyed, were on the search for new ways of representing the complexities of modern life — one that relied less on what the world looked like than how it felt. When Rebay travelled to Berlin in 1916, she met Herwarth Walden, gallerist and publisher of the radical art and literary magazine Der Sturm. In 1917, a selection of her wildly colourful compositions of curved, spiky and swelling lines, dots, circles and planes, was included in an influential group exhibition at the magazine’s gallery. (Rebay’s dynamic painting from 1915, “Composition I” — included in the show — was eventually acquired by Guggenheim.) The young artist began a tempestuous romance with the pioneering modernist Rudolf Bauer. Although their relationship was to end acrimoniously in 1944 — Bauer accused Rebay of being a Nazi (she wasn’t) and married his maid — the baroness’s belief in his genius never wavered and, thanks to her influence, many of his works entered the Guggenheim’s collection. But that was all in the future. In 1927, Rebay was restless to explore new horizons. Now guided not only by avant-garde developments in art, but by astrology, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Theosophy, she emigrated to the United States with the intention of opening a gallery of non-objective art. Although she had been mining the possibilities of abstraction, ever pragmatic and in need of money, she accepted commissions to paint portraits of New York’s high society, who were keen to welcome this intriguing, bohemian aristocrat into their midst. In 1928, Solomon R Guggenheim, whose wife Irene had bought one of Rebay’s collages, came calling. The resultant portrait is accomplished, if conventional: the philanthropist, a study in tweedy browns, sits cross-legged, looking out with a solemnity that belies his adventurous spirit. During the long hours of sitting for his painting, the millionaire formed a close friendship with the artist; within months, Rebay was Guggenheim’s art adviser, convincing him that a new world demanded a new artistic language. Rebay’s relationship with Bauer helped her establish connections with artists in France and Germany and, at her behest, Guggenheim acquired works by leading artists including Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, László Moholy-Nagy and others. In July 1930, Rebay travelled to Europe with Guggenheim and his wife and introduced them to Kandinsky, who was teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Guggenheim promptly bought “Composition 8” (1923), an exuberant study in lines and circles — the first of more than 150 works by the artist that would enter the collection. In 1937, Rebay declared: “Non-Objectivity will be the religion of the future. Very soon the nations on Earth will turn to it in thought and feeling and develop such intuitive powers which lead them to harmony.” That year, Guggenheim launched the foundation that was to become one of the most famous galleries on the planet.Rebay had long dreamt of a “museum-temple” filled with abstract art and, with Guggenheim’s blessing, in 1943, she found the architect who could turn her vision into a reality: Frank Lloyd Wright. She told him she was seeking “a lover of space, a fighter, and originator” and he rose to the challenge — although it took 16 years for it to be built. In 1959, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum landed like a spaceship on Fifth Avenue: an organic, biomorphic, light-filled gallery that guides its visitors in a spiral upwards. By the time the museum opened, however, Guggenheim himself had been dead for 10 years and, in 1952, Rebay, plagued with ill-health, had resigned — or, possibly, been fired — from her role as director, frustrated with the new, more conservative leadership of the Guggenheim after her mentor’s death. Apparently, she was not invited to the opening of the museum that she was so instrumental in creating. Understandably embittered, she never set foot in it. Rebay retreated to her homes in Connecticut and New Hampshire, where she continued to paint her vivid abstractions. She died in 1967.For decades, Rebay’s role in establishing the Guggenheim overshadowed her gifts as an innovative artist, although in 2005, the touring exhibition Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R Guggenheim went some way to re-establishing her reputation. In recent years, with a long-overdue light being cast on the achievements of creative women, her star is, once again, on the rise. At this year’s Tefaf in Maastricht, the Parisian Galerie Raphaël Durazzo is staging Hilla Rebay: A Forgotten Pioneer of Modern Art that will include 11 of her works from 1917 to 1958. “I find it absolutely insane that someone of Hilla Rebay’s importance should be overlooked,” Durazzo told me recently. He paused and smiled. “Her work is music on canvas. There is a perfect harmony. The paintings are singing.”raphaeldurazzo.comFind out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
