Considering in depth the origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum when it was first known as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, this volume reveals for the first time the museums complex and sometimes twisted architectural history and the ambitious exhibition programme organized by Hilla Rebay, the museums founding Director and Curator from 1939 to 1952. Through the extensive correspondence between Rebay and Rudolf Bauer the artist whose work Guggenheim collected exhaustively Karol Vail reveals the important role Bauer played in envisioning the collection and the museum. Fully illustrated throughout, and featuring extensive previously unpublished archival materials, this book provides essential reading and a rich reference of the Guggenheims multifaceted and fascinating history.

Originally, Solomon R. Guggenheim donated works from his collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which he began in 1937 to support and promote non-objective art. Then, in 1939, he established the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1952, and its signature Frank Lloyd Wright building opened on New York's Fifth Avenue in 1959. Over time, the Guggenheim has expanded the type of art that it exhibits and collects through the addition of other great collections - notably, those of Karl Nierendorf, Peggy Guggenheim, Justin and Hilde Thannhauser, and Giuseppe Panza di Biumo - as well as through opportunities that resulted from the institution's increasingly international focus in more recent decades. The Guggenheim today encompasses venues on two continents: the museum in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. This volume is published on the occasion of a major exhibition at the Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. With its comprehensive presentation of masterworks from the Guggenheim's extended holdings, it provides insight into Modern and Contemporary art movements - from Impressionism to Cubism, Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, Pop art and Minimalism to the most recent developments - and the distinctive features of the collection. The selection emphasizes the Guggenheim's ongoing commitment to acquiring the work of particular artists in depth, including Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra and Matthew Barney, among many others.

This exhibition brings to light Rebay's multifaceted career as artist, curator and collector and honours her achievements as the first director of the Guggenheim Museum.

Pioneering work by the great modernist painter, considered by many to be the father of abstract art and a leader in the movement to free art from traditional bonds. 12 illustrations.

Kasimir Malevich's treatise on Suprematism was included in the Bauhausbücher series in 1927, as was Piet Mondrian's reflections on Russian Constructivism in 1925 (New Design, Bauhausbücher 5). Like Mondrian, who was never an official member of the Bauhaus, Malevich nevertheless has a close connection to the ideas of the school in terms of content. This volume, the eleventh, remains the only book publication in Germany to be produced during the life of the Russian avant-garde artist, and it laid the foundation for his late work: to wrest the mask of life from the true face of art.

This collection of contemporary art, created by Giuseppe Panza di Biumo in over forty-five years of collecting is one of the most important collections of art from the last decades of the twentieth century. This fully illustrated book gives an account of the history of the collection, of loans to important museums and of exhibitions of the works from it at contemporary art museums around the world.

A groundbreaking study of visionary artist Hilma af Klint. When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than a thousand paintings and works on paper that she kept largely private during her lifetime. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it should remain unseen for another 20 years. But only in recent decades has the public had a chance to reckon with af Klint's radically abstract painting practice - one which predates the work of Vasily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered trailblazers of modernist abstraction. Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist's work in the United States, Hilma af Klint represents her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of the artist's life and work. Essays explore the social, intellectual, and artistic milieu of af Klint's 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars, and curators considers af Klint's sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art - a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum's rotunda, the site of the forthcoming exhibition.