The collection that Solomon R. Guggenheim (1861–1949) gave to his foundation between 1937 and his death in 1949 included hundreds of artworks from the most vibrant and dynamic styles of European modernism, including over 150 works by Vasily Kandinsky. The museum that bears his name was made possible by his inspired collecting of the art of his time. Yet, notably, Guggenheim only turned to contemporary, abstract art later in his life. He once said, “As it grew on me . . . I wished others to share my joy.”
Solomon Guggenheim with Rudolf Bauer’s White Fugue (Weisse Fuge, 1923–27); Guggenheim, Copyright, 2017.
Solomon Guggenheim and his wife, Irene Rothschild Guggenheim, began collecting art in the 1890s. At first the Guggenheims collected works expected of the refined members of the upper class: old masters, the French Barbizon school, American landscapes, Audubon prints, and manuscript illuminations. It was not until 1927, when he was in his late 60s, that Solomon started collecting modern art, when he met German abstract painter and collector Hilla Rebay, whom Irene had commissioned to paint his portrait.
Rebay’s studio near Carnegie Hall was decorated with works by artist Rudolf Bauer, her on-and-off romantic partner and longtime artistic collaborator. Guggenheim took an interest in these pieces—which were “nonobjective,” as Rebay referred to them, and dramatically different from the art he had previously experienced. The two formed a friendship, and Rebay encouraged him to collect some works by Bauer; this was the starting point of a personal and professional relationship that would last the rest of Guggenheim’s life.
Rebay’s studio near Carnegie Hall was decorated with works by artist Rudolf Bauer, her on-and-off romantic partner and longtime artistic collaborator. Guggenheim took an interest in these pieces—which were “nonobjective,” as Rebay referred to them, and dramatically different from the art he had previously experienced. The two formed a friendship, and Rebay encouraged him to collect some works by Bauer; this was the starting point of a personal and professional relationship that would last the rest of Guggenheim’s life.
Hilla Rebay, Solomon Guggenheim, and Rudolf Bauer at the Guggenheim family farm and hunting plantation, Cainhoy, South Carolina, ca. 1939 ; Guggenheim, Copyright, 2017.
In 1929, the Guggenheims traveled with Rebay to Europe to see, study, and collect art—one of several such trips they would make. In Dessau, Germany, they met Kandinsky while he was teaching at the Bauhaus, and Guggenheim purchased Composition 8 (Komposition 8, 1923). For the remaining twenty years of his life, Guggenheim, with Rebay’s input, systematically collected nonobjective art, purchasing works from Bauer and Kandinsky, as well as Robert Delaunay and László Moholy-Nagy. He expanded his collection in other aspects of modern art, with works by Marc Chagall, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, and Amedeo Modigliani. During this time, he also had dealings with gallery owner Karl Nierendorf, whose private collection would ultimately become part of the Guggenheim Foundation’s holdings.
“I wished others to share my joy.”
Of his collecting at this time, Guggenheim said, “Everybody was telling me that this modern stuff was the bunk. So as I’ve always been interested in things that people told me were the bunk, I decided that therefore there must be beauty in modern art. I got to feel those pictures so deeply that I wanted them to live with me.”
Live with him, they did. Beginning in the early 1930s, the Guggenheims used several suites that they occupied at the Plaza Hotel to showcase the growing collection, which was open to the public by appointment. Guggenheim’s collection also decorated his country home at Trilora Court in Sands Point, Long Island.
“I wished others to share my joy.”
Of his collecting at this time, Guggenheim said, “Everybody was telling me that this modern stuff was the bunk. So as I’ve always been interested in things that people told me were the bunk, I decided that therefore there must be beauty in modern art. I got to feel those pictures so deeply that I wanted them to live with me.”
Live with him, they did. Beginning in the early 1930s, the Guggenheims used several suites that they occupied at the Plaza Hotel to showcase the growing collection, which was open to the public by appointment. Guggenheim’s collection also decorated his country home at Trilora Court in Sands Point, Long Island.
Bedroom in the Guggenheims’ suite in the Plaza Hotel, New York, ca. 1937, with Vasily Kandinsky’s Composition 8 (Komposition 8, 1923) at the top left; Guggenheim, Copyright, 2017.
Guggenheim and Rebay envisioned something even greater for the collection’s display; in 1936, Rebay organized the first museum exhibition of the Guggenheim collection at the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery (now the Gibbes Museum of Art) in Charleston, South Carolina, near the Guggenheim’s farm and hunting retreat in Cainhoy. In 1937, Solomon founded the Guggenheim Foundation with Rebay as its curator and director. Further exhibitions were mounted at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1937; at the Gibbes again in 1938; and at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1939. Rebay later recounted that Guggenheim wanted to open a grand museum as soon as possible, but that she encouraged him to start on a smaller scale and build an American public for nonobjective art.
First-ever showing of Solomon Guggenheim’s collection of nonobjective art, curated by Hilla Rebay, Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery (now Gibbes Museum of Art), Charleston, South Carolina, 1936; Guggenheim, Copyright, 2017.
Together, they contracted young architect William Muschenheim to design a gallery for the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which opened in 1939 on East 54th Street. The unusual space corresponded to Rebay and Guggenheim’s notions of a “museum-temple” for the deep contemplation of the spiritual and utopian aspects of nonobjective art. It had pleated-velour-covered walls and carpeted floors, incense filled the air, and music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig von Beethoven played in the gallery. All of these elements were meant to enable the general public to “live” with these works.
Museum of Non-Objective Painting, New York; Guggenheim, Copyright, 2017.
After several years of increasing attendance for the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, Guggenheim and Rebay commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a museum for a lot that Guggenheim had acquired on Fifth Avenue. The site was just blocks from other institutions with wealthy industrialist patrons—the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art—but the new museum’s architecture and purpose were to be very different indeed. Wright’s now-iconic spiral design opened to the public in 1959, ten years after Guggenheim’s death. Toward the end of his life, Guggenheim said of the project that he never regretted his “intuitive decision nor my great faith in this [nonobjective] Art.”
Frank Lloyd Wright, Hilla Rebay, and Solomon Guggenheim with a model of Wright’s design for the new museum, Plaza Hotel, New York, 1945; Guggenheim, Copyright, 2017.
Through the institutions that he founded, Guggenheim was able to provide a public home and ongoing preservation, archival, and curatorial support for his collection as well as those of his colleagues and contemporaries, Rebay, Thannhauser, Nierendorf, Katherine S. Dreier, and eventually, his niece Peggy Guggenheim. Those institutions continue to collect, preserve, and showcase the most relevant modern and contemporary movements and works from artistic communities around the globe.
Solomon R Guggenheim at the Plaza Bauer Andante, Guggenheim , Copyright, 2017.
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