Peggy Guggenheim
Encyclopedia
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim (August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American
art
collector. Born to a wealthy New York City
family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim
, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim
, who would establish the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
.
-German
Jewish origin, and her mother German-Jewish, and Dutch
-Jewish. At the age of 21 in 1919, Peggy Guggenheim inherited a small fortune of US$2.5 million. This would be roughly US$20 million in today's currency. Guggenheim's father, Benjamin Guggenheim
died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic and he had not amassed the fortune of his siblings, therefore her inheritance was far less than the vast wealth of her cousins.
She was a clerk in an avant-garde bookstore, the Sunwise Turn, when she first became enamored with the members of the bohemian
artistic community. In 1920 she went to live in Paris
, France. Once there, she became friendly with avant-garde
writers and artists, many of whom were living in poverty in the Montparnasse
quarter of the city. Man Ray
photographed her, http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/RP-F-F17662?lang=en and was, along with Constantin Brâncuşi
and Marcel Duchamp
, a friend whose art she was eventually to promote.
She became close friends with writer Natalie Barney and artist Romaine Brooks
, and was a regular at Barney's stylish salon
. She met Djuna Barnes
during this time, and in time became her friend and patron. Barnes wrote her best-known novel, Nightwood, while staying at the Devonshire country manor, 'Hayford Hall', that Guggenheim had rented for two summers.
featuring Jean Cocteau
and began to collect works of art. After the outbreak of World War II
, she purchased as much abstract and Surrealist art as possible.
Peggy Guggenheim opened the gallery Guggenheim Jeune in London
in January 1938 — the name being ingeniously chosen to associate the epitome of a gallery, the French Bernheim Jeune, with the name of her own well known family. The gallery on 30 Cork Street
, next to Roland Penrose
's and E. L. T. Mesens' show-case for the Surrealist movement, the London Gallery, proved to be successful, thanks to many friends who gave advice and who helped run the gallery. Marcel Duchamp
, whom she had known since the early 1920s, when she lived in Paris
with her first husband Laurence Vail, introduced Peggy Guggenheim to the art world; it was through him that she met many artists during her frequent visits to Paris. He taught her about contemporary art and styles, and he conceived several of the exhibitions held at Guggenheim Jeune.
The gallery's opening show was dedicated to Jean Cocteau
. It was followed by exhibitions on Wassily Kandinsky
(his first one-man-show in England), Yves Tanguy
, Wolfgang Paalen
and several other well known and some lesser-known artists. Peggy Guggenheim also held group exhibitions of sculpture and collage, with the participation of the now classic moderns Antoine Pevsner
, Henry Moore
, Henri Laurens
, Alexander Calder
, Raymond Duchamp-Villon
, Constantin Brâncuşi
, Jean Arp
, Max Ernst
, Pablo Picasso
, George Braque and Kurt Schwitters
.
She also greatly admired the work of John Tunnard
(1900–1971) and is credited with his discovery in mainstream international modernism
.
in New York
, who, with the help and encouragement of Hilla Rebay, had created the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation two years earlier. The main aim of this foundation had been to collect and to further the production of abstract art
, resulting in the opening of the Museum of Non-objective Painting (from 1952: The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum) earlier in 1939 on East 54th Street
in Manhattan. Peggy Guggenheim closed Guggenheim Jeune with a farewell party on 22 June 1939, at which colour portrait photographs by Gisèle Freund
were projected on the walls. She started making plans for a Museum of Modern Art in London together with the English
art historian and art critic
Herbert Read
. She set aside $40,000 for the museum's running costs. However, these funds were soon overstretched with the organisers' ambitions.
In August 1939, Peggy Guggenheim left for Paris to negotiate loans for the first exhibition. In her luggage was a list drawn up by Herbert Read for this occasion.
Shortly after her departure the Second World War broke out, and the events following 1 September 1939 made her abandon the scheme, willingly or not.
She then "decided now to buy paintings by all the painters who were on Herbert Read's list. Having plenty of time and all the museum's funds at my disposal, I put myself on a regime to buy one picture a day."
When finished, she had acquired ten Picassos
, forty Ernsts
, eight Mirós
, four Magrittes
, three Man Ray
s, three Dalís
, one Klee
, one Wolfgang Paalen
and one Chagall
among others. In the meantime, she had also made new plans and in April 1940 had rented a large space in the Place Vendôme as a new home for her museum.
A few days before the Germans reached Paris, Peggy Guggenheim had to abandon her plans for a Paris museum, and fled to the south of France, from where, after months of safeguarding her collection and artist friends, she left Europe for New York in the summer of 1941. There, in the following year, she opened a new gallery which actually was in part a museum. It was called The Art of This Century Gallery
. Three of the four galleries were dedicated to Cubist and Abstract art, Surrealism and Kinetic art, with only the fourth, the front room, being a commercial gallery.
As a result of her interest in new artists she was instrumental in advancing the careers of many important modern artists, including the American painter Jackson Pollock
and William Congdon
, the Austrian surrealist Wolfgang Paalen
, the sound poet Ada Verdun Howell
and the German painter Max Ernst
, whom she married in December 1941.
— and her 1946 divorce from Max Ernst
— she closed The Art of This Century Gallery
in 1947, and returned to Europe; deciding to live in Venice, Italy. In 1948, she was invited to exhibit her collection in the disused Greek Pavilion of the Venice Biennale
and in 1949 established herself in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal.
Her collection became one of the few European collections of modern art to promote a significant amount of works by Americans.
In the 1950s she promoted the art of two local painters, Edmondo Bacci and Tancredi Parmeggiani.
By the early 1960s, Peggy Guggenheim had almost stopped collecting art and began to concentrate on presenting what she already owned. She loaned out her collection to museums in Europe
and in 1969 to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
in New York City
, which was named after her uncle. Eventually, she decided at this time to donate her home and her collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, a gift which was concluded inter vivos in 1976, before her death in 1979.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection
is one of the most important museums in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century. Pieces in her collection embrace Cubism
, Surrealism
and Abstract Expressionism
.
Peggy Guggenheim lived in Venice until her death in Camposampiero near Padua
, Italy
after a stroke. Her ashes are interred in the garden (later: Nasher Sculpture Garden) of her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (inside the Peggy Guggenheim Collection), next to her beloved dogs.
had a brief affair.
Peggy Guggenheim's first marriage was to Laurence Vail, a Dada
sculptor and writer with whom she had two children, Michael Cedric Sindbad and Pegeen. They divorced following his affair with writer Kay Boyle
, whom he later married.
She married her second husband, Max Ernst
, in 1941 and divorced him in 1946.
In her autobiography, she claims to have had affairs with numerous artists and in return many others, including artists, have claimed affairs with her. She is even mentioned as having had affairs with fictional characters, for example William Boyd
's Nat Tate.
She has eight grandchildren: Clovis, Mark, Karole and Julia Vail, from her son, and Fabrice, David and Nicolas Hélion and Sandro Rumney from her daughter.
She has one niece: Barbara, from her sister Hazel
She has three great nieces and nephews: Ghislaine, Amelia, and Adam
She has great great nieces and nephews: Gabrielle, Chantal, Maya, Daniel, Michael, John
in the movie Pollock
(2000), directed by Ed Harris
, based on the life of Jackson Pollock
.
A play by Lanie Robertson based on Peggy Guggenheim's life, Woman Before a Glass, opened at the Promenade Theatre on Broadway, New York on March 10, 2005. It is a one woman show, which focuses on Peggy Guggenheim's later life. Mercedes Ruehl
plays Peggy Guggenheim. Ruehl received an Obie award
for her performance. In May 2011, the Abingdon Theater Arts Complex in New York features a revival of this play, starring veteran stage actress Judy Rosenblatt, directed by Austin Pendleton.
In Bethan Roberts' first play for radio, "My Own Private Gondolier", Peggy Guggenheim's troubled daughter, Pegeen, leaves her three children behind when she travels to Venice to spend the summer with her mother. Pegeen is in retreat from a marriage that has failed. She is determined to be an artist, and she shuts herself up in the dank basement, trying to paint. Meanwhile, her mother, Peggy, is much more concerned with the English sculptor who has come to visit; she wants a piece of his work to add to her collection and will use everything at her disposal to achieve her aim. She'll even try to inveigle her daughter into the plan if she thinks it will get her what she wants. Peggy is well known as a collector of men, as well as art. As the summer progresses, and the strains between mother and daughter grow, it's only Gianni, Peggy's personal Gondolier, who can provide a welcome diversion. The play was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4
on Oct. 19, 2010. Peggy Guggenheim was played by Fiona Shaw
. Pegeen Vail was played by Hattie Morahan Jack.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
collector. Born to a wealthy New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim
Benjamin Guggenheim
Benjamin Guggenheim was an American businessman. He died aboard when the ship sank near Cape Race, Newfoundland.-Early life:...
, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Solomon Robert Guggenheim was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Meyer Guggenheim and brother of Simon, Benjamin, Daniel and four other siblings.Following studies in Switzerland at the Concordia Institute in...
, who would establish the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and artist Hilla von Rebay. The first museum established by the foundation was the "Museum of Non-Objective Art", which was housed in rented space on Park Avenue in New York....
.
Early life: inheritance, involvement in the art/writing community
Peggy's father was of SwissSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
-German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Jewish origin, and her mother German-Jewish, and Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
-Jewish. At the age of 21 in 1919, Peggy Guggenheim inherited a small fortune of US$2.5 million. This would be roughly US$20 million in today's currency. Guggenheim's father, Benjamin Guggenheim
Benjamin Guggenheim
Benjamin Guggenheim was an American businessman. He died aboard when the ship sank near Cape Race, Newfoundland.-Early life:...
died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic and he had not amassed the fortune of his siblings, therefore her inheritance was far less than the vast wealth of her cousins.
She was a clerk in an avant-garde bookstore, the Sunwise Turn, when she first became enamored with the members of the bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
artistic community. In 1920 she went to live in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France. Once there, she became friendly with avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
writers and artists, many of whom were living in poverty in the Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
quarter of the city. Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
photographed her, http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/RP-F-F17662?lang=en and was, along with Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
and Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, a friend whose art she was eventually to promote.
She became close friends with writer Natalie Barney and artist Romaine Brooks
Romaine Brooks
Romaine Brooks, born Beatrice Romaine Goddard , was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the color gray...
, and was a regular at Barney's stylish salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
. She met Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
during this time, and in time became her friend and patron. Barnes wrote her best-known novel, Nightwood, while staying at the Devonshire country manor, 'Hayford Hall', that Guggenheim had rented for two summers.
Collecting, before World War II
In 1938, she opened a gallery for modern art in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
featuring Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
and began to collect works of art. After the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, she purchased as much abstract and Surrealist art as possible.
Peggy Guggenheim opened the gallery Guggenheim Jeune in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in January 1938 — the name being ingeniously chosen to associate the epitome of a gallery, the French Bernheim Jeune, with the name of her own well known family. The gallery on 30 Cork Street
Cork Street
Cork Street is a street in Mayfair in the West End of London, England. It is very well known in the British art world for the commercial art galleries that dominate the street. It is located to the north of Burlington House, which houses the Royal Academy, a leading British art institution...
, next to Roland Penrose
Roland Penrose
Sir Roland Algernon Penrose CBE was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom.- Biography :...
's and E. L. T. Mesens' show-case for the Surrealist movement, the London Gallery, proved to be successful, thanks to many friends who gave advice and who helped run the gallery. Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, whom she had known since the early 1920s, when she lived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
with her first husband Laurence Vail, introduced Peggy Guggenheim to the art world; it was through him that she met many artists during her frequent visits to Paris. He taught her about contemporary art and styles, and he conceived several of the exhibitions held at Guggenheim Jeune.
The gallery's opening show was dedicated to Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
. It was followed by exhibitions on Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
(his first one-man-show in England), Yves Tanguy
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy , known as Yves Tanguy, was a French surrealist painter.-Biography:Tanguy was born in Paris, France, the son of a retired navy captain. His parents were both of Breton origin...
, Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.-Early life:Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905, as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...
and several other well known and some lesser-known artists. Peggy Guggenheim also held group exhibitions of sculpture and collage, with the participation of the now classic moderns Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner was a Belarusian and Russian sculptor and the older brother of Alexii Pevsner and Naum Gabo. Both Antoine and Naum are considered pioneers of twentieth-century sculpture.Pevsner was born in Klimavichy, Belarus...
, Henry Moore
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
, Henri Laurens
Henri Laurens
Henri Laurens was a French sculptor and illustrator.-Early life and education:Born in Paris, Henri Laurens worked as a stonemason before he became a sculptor...
, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raymond Duchamp-Villon was a French sculptor.Duchamp-Villon was born Pierre-Maurice-Raymond Duchamp in Damville, Eure, in the Haute-Normandie region of France, the second son of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp. Of the six Duchamp children, four would become successful artists...
, Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, Jean Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, George Braque and Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
.
She also greatly admired the work of John Tunnard
John Tunnard
John Samuel Tunnard was an English Modernist designer and painter. He was the cousin of landscape architect Christopher Tunnard.-Life:...
(1900–1971) and is credited with his discovery in mainstream international modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
.
Plans for a museum
When Peggy Guggenheim realized that her gallery, although well received, had made a loss of £600 in the first year, she decided to spend the money in a more practical way. A museum for contemporary arts was exactly the institution she could see herself supporting. Most certainly on her mind were also the adventures of her uncle, Solomon R. GuggenheimSolomon R. Guggenheim
Solomon Robert Guggenheim was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Meyer Guggenheim and brother of Simon, Benjamin, Daniel and four other siblings.Following studies in Switzerland at the Concordia Institute in...
in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, who, with the help and encouragement of Hilla Rebay, had created the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation two years earlier. The main aim of this foundation had been to collect and to further the production of abstract art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, resulting in the opening of the Museum of Non-objective Painting (from 1952: The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum) earlier in 1939 on East 54th Street
54th Street (Manhattan)
54th Street is a two-mile-long, one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan.-West Side Highway:*The route begins at the West Side Highway . Opposite the intersection is the New York Passenger Ship Terminal and the Hudson River...
in Manhattan. Peggy Guggenheim closed Guggenheim Jeune with a farewell party on 22 June 1939, at which colour portrait photographs by Gisèle Freund
Gisèle Freund
Gisèle Freund was a German-born French photographer, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book is Photographie et société , about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium.-Early life:Freund was born near Berlin to a wealthy Jewish family...
were projected on the walls. She started making plans for a Museum of Modern Art in London together with the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
art historian and art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
. She set aside $40,000 for the museum's running costs. However, these funds were soon overstretched with the organisers' ambitions.
In August 1939, Peggy Guggenheim left for Paris to negotiate loans for the first exhibition. In her luggage was a list drawn up by Herbert Read for this occasion.
Shortly after her departure the Second World War broke out, and the events following 1 September 1939 made her abandon the scheme, willingly or not.
She then "decided now to buy paintings by all the painters who were on Herbert Read's list. Having plenty of time and all the museum's funds at my disposal, I put myself on a regime to buy one picture a day."
When finished, she had acquired ten Picassos
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, forty Ernsts
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, eight Mirós
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
, four Magrittes
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...
, three Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
s, three Dalís
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, one Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
, one Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.-Early life:Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905, as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...
and one Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
among others. In the meantime, she had also made new plans and in April 1940 had rented a large space in the Place Vendôme as a new home for her museum.
A few days before the Germans reached Paris, Peggy Guggenheim had to abandon her plans for a Paris museum, and fled to the south of France, from where, after months of safeguarding her collection and artist friends, she left Europe for New York in the summer of 1941. There, in the following year, she opened a new gallery which actually was in part a museum. It was called The Art of This Century Gallery
The Art of This Century Gallery
The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 W. 57th Street in New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of...
. Three of the four galleries were dedicated to Cubist and Abstract art, Surrealism and Kinetic art, with only the fourth, the front room, being a commercial gallery.
As a result of her interest in new artists she was instrumental in advancing the careers of many important modern artists, including the American painter Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
and William Congdon
William Congdon
William Grosvenor Congdon gained notoriety as an artist in New York City in the 1940s, but lived most of his life in Europe....
, the Austrian surrealist Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.-Early life:Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905, as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...
, the sound poet Ada Verdun Howell
Ada Verdun Howell
Ada Verdun Howell was an Australian author and poet. Born in Beaufort, Victoria, on her father's sheep property, she was educated at Ruytons Girls' School. Her sister was the artist Valma Howell. She lived in New York in the latter part of her life where she wrote most of her most famous works...
and the German painter Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, whom she married in December 1941.
The collection, after World War II
Following World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
— and her 1946 divorce from Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
— she closed The Art of This Century Gallery
The Art of This Century Gallery
The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 W. 57th Street in New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of...
in 1947, and returned to Europe; deciding to live in Venice, Italy. In 1948, she was invited to exhibit her collection in the disused Greek Pavilion of the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
and in 1949 established herself in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal.
Her collection became one of the few European collections of modern art to promote a significant amount of works by Americans.
In the 1950s she promoted the art of two local painters, Edmondo Bacci and Tancredi Parmeggiani.
By the early 1960s, Peggy Guggenheim had almost stopped collecting art and began to concentrate on presenting what she already owned. She loaned out her collection to museums in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and in 1969 to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, which was named after her uncle. Eventually, she decided at this time to donate her home and her collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, a gift which was concluded inter vivos in 1976, before her death in 1979.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. It is one of several museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation....
is one of the most important museums in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century. Pieces in her collection embrace Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
and Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
.
Peggy Guggenheim lived in Venice until her death in Camposampiero near Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
after a stroke. Her ashes are interred in the garden (later: Nasher Sculpture Garden) of her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (inside the Peggy Guggenheim Collection), next to her beloved dogs.
Private life / gossip
Starting in late December 1937, she and Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
had a brief affair.
Peggy Guggenheim's first marriage was to Laurence Vail, a Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
sculptor and writer with whom she had two children, Michael Cedric Sindbad and Pegeen. They divorced following his affair with writer Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, whom he later married.
She married her second husband, Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
, in 1941 and divorced him in 1946.
In her autobiography, she claims to have had affairs with numerous artists and in return many others, including artists, have claimed affairs with her. She is even mentioned as having had affairs with fictional characters, for example William Boyd
William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...
's Nat Tate.
She has eight grandchildren: Clovis, Mark, Karole and Julia Vail, from her son, and Fabrice, David and Nicolas Hélion and Sandro Rumney from her daughter.
She has one niece: Barbara, from her sister Hazel
She has three great nieces and nephews: Ghislaine, Amelia, and Adam
She has great great nieces and nephews: Gabrielle, Chantal, Maya, Daniel, Michael, John
Portrayals
Peggy Guggenheim is portrayed by Amy MadiganAmy Madigan
Amy Marie Madigan is an American actress who is known for her role as Annie Kinsella in the 1989 film Field of Dreams and Iris Crowe in the HBO television series Carnivale...
in the movie Pollock
Pollock (film)
Pollock is a 2000 biographical drama film which tells the life story of painter Jackson Pollock. It stars Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Robert Knott, Bud Cort, Molly Regan, Marcia Gay Harden and Sada Thompson.-Plot:...
(2000), directed by Ed Harris
Ed Harris
Edward Allen "Ed" Harris is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, Radio, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, and The Truman Show. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies...
, based on the life of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
.
A play by Lanie Robertson based on Peggy Guggenheim's life, Woman Before a Glass, opened at the Promenade Theatre on Broadway, New York on March 10, 2005. It is a one woman show, which focuses on Peggy Guggenheim's later life. Mercedes Ruehl
Mercedes Ruehl
Mercedes J. Ruehl is an American theater, television and film actor.-Personal life:Ruehl was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, the daughter of Mercedes J., a school teacher, and Vincent Ruehl, an FBI agent. She was raised Catholic. Her father was of German and Irish descent and her...
plays Peggy Guggenheim. Ruehl received an Obie award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
for her performance. In May 2011, the Abingdon Theater Arts Complex in New York features a revival of this play, starring veteran stage actress Judy Rosenblatt, directed by Austin Pendleton.
In Bethan Roberts' first play for radio, "My Own Private Gondolier", Peggy Guggenheim's troubled daughter, Pegeen, leaves her three children behind when she travels to Venice to spend the summer with her mother. Pegeen is in retreat from a marriage that has failed. She is determined to be an artist, and she shuts herself up in the dank basement, trying to paint. Meanwhile, her mother, Peggy, is much more concerned with the English sculptor who has come to visit; she wants a piece of his work to add to her collection and will use everything at her disposal to achieve her aim. She'll even try to inveigle her daughter into the plan if she thinks it will get her what she wants. Peggy is well known as a collector of men, as well as art. As the summer progresses, and the strains between mother and daughter grow, it's only Gianni, Peggy's personal Gondolier, who can provide a welcome diversion. The play was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
on Oct. 19, 2010. Peggy Guggenheim was played by Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw
Fiona Shaw, CBE is an Irish actress and theatre director. Although to international audiences she is probably most familiar for her minor role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films, she is an accomplished classical actress...
. Pegeen Vail was played by Hattie Morahan Jack.
See also
- The Art of This Century GalleryThe Art of This Century GalleryThe Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 W. 57th Street in New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of...
- SurrealismSurrealismSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
- Abstract expressionismAbstract expressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
- Max ErnstMax ErnstMax Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
- William CongdonWilliam CongdonWilliam Grosvenor Congdon gained notoriety as an artist in New York City in the 1940s, but lived most of his life in Europe....
- Wolfgang PaalenWolfgang PaalenWolfgang Paalen was an Austrian-Mexican painter and theorist.-Early life:Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna in 1905, as the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel...
External links
- Peggy Guggenheim: Mistress Of Modernism life story from Marie Claire Magazine Australia