The Guggenheim in Bonn

The Guggenheim Museum, temporarily housed in a former automobile salon, exhibited works of art that were radically cutting edge for their time. Solomon Guggenheim wasn't just a collector; he also placed great emphasis on supporting artists and making their work better known.

The Russian painter and art theorist Vasily Kandinsky kept company with other prominent artists of his day such as Franz Marc, Paul Klee and August Macke. Together with Marc, he published the almanac "Der Blaue Reiter." The Guggenheim Foundation has established a permanent gallery to exhibit its collection of Kandinsky's works -- the third largest collection in the world -- as he is an artist who is closely associated with the museum's founder. His "Composition 8" was the first painting purchased by Solomon R. Guggenheim for the museum.

Leading US industrialist Solomon R. Guggenheim founded his eponymous foundation in 1937 after making millions in the mining industry. Beginning in 1927, his passion for collecting art was strongly influenced by the German baroness, Hilla Rebay. She convinced the businessman to establish a museum for "non-objective art." With that, she helped to lay the foundations for what would become one of the most famous collections of modern art in the world.

Designed by North American architect Frank Gehry, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is an extraordinary combination of interconnecting shapes, and has become a preeminent attraction for visitors to this Spanish city.

The American painter Mark Rothko is known as one of the most important representatives of the Abstract Expressionist style. He is closely associated with the New York School, a circle of painters that emerged in the 1940s as a new collective voice in American art. His large color-field paintings with their blurred edges give a feeling of depth. Rothko tried to forge an intimate relationship between his work and the viewer, hanging very large canvases in small rooms with soft lighting. He largely abandoned conventional titles in 1947, and also resisted explaining the meaning of his work. "Silence is so accurate," he once said.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York opened in 1959 and was an instant public magnet. Its architecture initially inspired a massive controversy, and even today, Frank Lloyd Wright's design has lost none of its appeal or ability to provoke.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright saw the interior of the New York Guggenheim Museum as a kind of "spiritual temple." He wanted visitors to experience art displayed here in a whole new way.

The Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti was greatly influenced first by Cubism, and then by the Surrealists, whom he joined in 1929. However six years later, he broke with them to work from models rather than strictly his imagination. Much of his work is dominated by ultra-thin human figures in bronze, as is the case in "Nose" -- a head suspended from a cross bar in a rectangular cage. The Guggenheim suggests seeing "Nose" within the context of the existential angst voiced by Giacometti's friend, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Along with Andy Warhol, American artist Roy Lichtenstein was a major representative of the Pop art movement. While his early work was closer to that of the Abstract Expressionists, in the 1960s, his work began drawing on comic books and advertising. In 1963, Lichtenstein defended Pop art, saying that "there are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art."

Besides being an iconoclastic artist, Andy Warhol was also an American writer, director and social figure. He was one of the founders of the Pop Art movement in the US in the 1950s. Warhol is best known for his simple, high-contrast color paintings and silkscreens of consumer products and celebrities.

It took more than 15 years for workers to realize architect Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York, but visitors find it was well worth the wait.

The Russian-French painter Marc Chagall was a forerunner of the Expressionist movement, working closely together with the Fauvist painters Matisse and Picasso. In his work, impressions of life in France mingle with those from folk art, Russian fairy tales and the Jewish tradition, as well as mystical ideas from religion and childhood to form a very personal style. In "Green Violinist," Chagall evokes his homeland, where violinists performed to mark occasions in rustic village life.