(Lindenwald 1889–1953 Deal/New Jersey)
Two purple balls – Das Geistreich, 1938, Signed R. Bauer; signed Rudolf Bauer on the reverse with the stamp: Das Geistreich, R. Bauer. An der Heerstraße 78. Charlottenburg-Westend.oil on canvas, 100.5 x 145 cm, framed, (AR)

We are grateful to Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, for confirming the registration of this work in the Rudolf Bauer Archives

Provenance:
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (label on the reverse)
Hutton - Hutschnecker Galleries, New York
Sotheby’s, New York, 12 May 1994, lot no. 305
Galleria Silvano Lodi Jr, Milan
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
New York, The Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, Fifth Catalogue of the Collection of Non-Objective Paintings, 1939, no. 209, p. 116, no. 9 with ill.
New York, Hutton Galleries, Rudolf Bauer, 1970, no. 58;
Milan, Galleria Silvano Lodi Jr, Arte Astratta in Europa tra le due guerre, 1992, p. 12–13 with ill. (label on the reverse)

“Though the truth be crushed to the earth, it shall rise again and to my mind has come the realisation that the many years of silence must be broken. The world must and should know the truth of my husband’s life, his hopes, his labours, his honesty and his bitter betrayal. Rudolf Bauer, artist of a great spiritual scope, writer of vision, master thinker, Rudolf Bauer!“
(Mrs. Louise Bauer, 1954)

Born in 1889 in Lindenwald, Germany, Rudolf Bauer studied briefly at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, but soon abandoned academic art instruction to forge his path independently. Over the next five years, Bauer experimented with Impressionism and satirical caricatures. By 1911 he had moved on to Cubism. Following his brief engagement with Expressionism, Bauer had adopted the non-objective style that would occupy his art, writing, advocacy, and collecting practices for the rest of his life. He established himself at Herwarth Walden‘s famed Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin alongside fellow luminaries Paul Klee, Franz Marc and Vasily Kandinsky and by the fall of 1916 he met Hilla Rebay, with whom he began a long and complex relationship. In the late 1920s, he began to serve as a major instigator of acquisitions for Solomon R. Guggenheim‘s collection.
In 1930 Bauer founded Das Geistreich, a museum devoted primarily to his own non-objective work as well as the work of Vasily Kandinsky. This museum proved highly influential to Rebay as she began formulating The Museum of Non-Objective Painting for Guggenheim‘s collection and Bauer was recognized by Solomon R. Guggenheim as the foremost non-objective artist, becoming the centrepiece of the museum’s founding collection during the 1920s, 30s and 40s.

Das Geistreich was closed in 1939 by the Nazis, who identified the institution as being devoted to “degenerate“ art, and Bauer was held in a Gestapo prison for several months.
Just months before the beginning of World War II, he decided to leave his homeland and move to US where, through Rebay, he got Guggenheim to secure his immigration to NYC in 1939. In 1949 things changed drastically for Rebay when Solomon Guggenheim died. Within a couple of years of Solomon’s death the trustees abandoned Guggenheim’s original vision for the collection. Hilla Rebay was asked to step down as curator, and all of Guggenheim’s non-objective collection was sent to storage. In 1953 Rudolf Bauer died of lung cancer. The newly renamed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened in 1959 without a single work of Bauer’s on its walls.

Bauer’s work was basically unseen for the next two decades. Since the late 60s solo exhibitions of Bauer‘s work have been organised by Galerie Gmurzynska in Cologne (1969 and 1971), Galerie Withofs in Brussels (1970), Annely Juda Gallery in London (1970), Staedtisches Museum in Wiesbaden (1970), and Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna (1985). His influence on the formation of the Guggenheim collection and museum were recognised in the exhibition and catalogue Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2005, as well as in the 2009 publication The Museum of Non-Objective Painting Hilla Rebay and the Origins of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The work that Dorotheum has the pleasure to offer is a beautiful example of that series of compositions from the 1930s, characterised by the same silent balance and pure,geometric aesthetics that can be found in the famous painting Invention (Composition 31) (1933) in the Guggenheim Collection.