?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
von Rebay, Hilla (1890-1967) La Surprise.
Paper collage and watercolor on thin wove paper, signed "von Rebay" in collage, lower left recto, 17 x 13 3/4 i.
Provenance: Ashley John Gallery, Palm Beach, with the label on the frame back; private collection, New Jersey.
Von Rebay was born into an aristocratic family in Strasbourg (at the time a part of Germany) and studied painting in Paris, Cologne and Munich. In 1917, she moved to Berlin and was introduced to the avant-garde Galerie der Sturm, which was the center of the modern art scene in the city. While in Berlin, she also met Rudolf Bauer (1889-1953), with whom she had a lifelong relationship.
Rebay was interested in non-objective art, a form of abstraction that was rooted in esoteric religious beliefs and philosophical ideas of intuition. She believed this form of art was a cure for a world ravaged by war and the burgeoning technological innovations that fueled materialism.
In 1927, she moved to New York and was commissioned to paint Solomon Guggenheim's portrait. She took the opportunity to encourage him to collect non-objective art and became instrumental in guiding Guggenheim's collection. When he founded the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) in New York, she was the first curator and director of the museum and chose Frank Lloyd Wright to design the now iconic building.
