Hilla von Rebay

Biography

Hilla von Rebay is the daughter of a Prussian career officer. After her first artistic education in Germany, she studied painting in Paris and Munich. Her particular passion, however, was performing arts.

In Berlin, von Rebay met famous artists such as Klee, Kandinsky, Delaunay and Chagall, who strongly influenced her style.

In 1916, she met Hans Arp in Zurich, who familiarised her with the art of collage. She used this form of expression frequently in the 1920s – also later in the USA as “plastic paintings” or, as she called them, “glued constructions”.

Together with Otto Nebel and Rudolf Bauer, Hilla von Rebay founded the artists’ group Der Krater and subsequently travelled to Italy for an extended period. She became interested in topics such as theosophy and spirituality and attended courses on these subjects with Rudolf Steiner in Berlin.

In 1927, she moved to New York, where she met Solomon R. Guggenheim. She introduced him to non-objective art and played a key role in the planning and design of the Guggenheim Museum. He also appointed her founding director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York.

As a painter of abstract paintings at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as later as a promoter of non-objective art, she was instrumental in the international breakthrough of abstract painting.