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Vantongerloo’s Collectors
from Crossover Culture Max Bill’s and Georges Vantongerloo’s Ties with the United States by Angela Thomas
go on to collect. Decades later, both artists would receive the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, with Bill receiving the award for sculpture in 1993, and Kelly receiving the award for painting a few years later, in 2000.
Georges Vantongerloo never visited the U.S.A. himself, but he did receive studio visits from influential Americans, such as the New York gallery owner Rose Fried and Hilla von Rebay, who bought several of his paintings for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in the 1950s and had them exhibited back in New York. He also received visits from Lillian Florsheim, the collector-cum-artist from Chicago.
Lillian Florsheim began collecting art in the 1950s and built a significant and considered collection over the next two decades. She became friends with Georges Vantongerloo, visiting him each year in Paris and acquiring a number of his works. Their warm correspondence continued into the 1960s, when her own work changed—now more abstract, her sculptures became complex studies of pure form, building on the work of Jean Arp and Bill whose work she also collected.
