Hilla von Rebay

Hilla von Rebay (1890-1967) is perhaps best known as one of the founders and the first director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, but she was also an accomplished abstract artist, or, as she would have called herself, a non-objective artist. von Rebay began her artistic career creating collages and combining them with watercolors before moving on to create purely painted works. Like Agnes Lawrence Pelton, she was endlessly fascinated by the philosophy and work of Vassily Kandinsky, calling him a "prophet of almost religious significance." For both Kandinsky and von Rebay, their creative endeavors in abstract art became methods for achieving spiritual enlightenment and healing. Her spiritual ideas though, however similar to Kandinsky's, often infuriated other artists and art critics, leading to her contributions to the success of the Avant-garde movement to be underappreciated.