Aby Warburg(1866-1929) was born in Hamburg into the Warburg family of German-Jewish bankers. Although he could travel privileged as a wealthy young man, his journey through the remote southwest of the USA was at times quite arduous. 

In the academic field, Aby Warburg is considered a border crosser between disciplines. He drew innovative lines of connection between art and cultural anthropology, religion and psychology, between pictorial spheres that seemed incompatible. For a time he lived in a sanatorium in Kreuzlingen because of a mental illness. He is considered the founder of iconology. 

About the Pueblo he wrote: Without studying Pueblo cultures, "I would never never would have been able to find a larger basis for the Psychology of the Renaissance."

In 1902 he bequeathed his Pueblo collection to what was then the Museum of Ethnology, now the MARKK.