When, in 1943, Rebay hired American architect Frank Lloyd Wright instead of a German to design the new museum, Bauer saw this as yet another betrayal, according to the Bauer catalog for the show.
?
Stopped painting
Sometime in the 1940s, Bauer stopped painting, Manqueros said.
He was in his 50s, and could have been considered at the height of his artistic powers.
Whether he lost his will to create or lost faith in his art patron, no one apparently knows.
Bauer eventually married his German-born maid, who is quoted as saying that, when he died in 1953 at the age of 64, he was “a broken man.”
The Guggenheim Museum opened in 1959, 10 years after the death of Solomon Guggenheim.
The Guggenheim family removed the modernist work of Bauer and Rebay that Solomon Guggenheim had championed and replaced it with more palatable traditional art, according to the film. The family also may have wanted to purge the museum of anything associated with the elder Guggenheim’s alleged mistress and her associates, Manqueros said.
In 2006, the Guggenheim opened up its basement and brought out works for the first-ever major retrospective of Hilla Rebay, Manqueros said. Now Lowy and Manqueros want the world to know about Bauer, Rebay and the Art of Tomorrow.
The show continues through July 15 at Wendt Modern, 1550 S. Coast Hwy., Suite 102. For more information, call (949) 497-4292 or visit www.wendtmodern.com
CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 380-4321 or cindy.frazier@latimes.com.
