Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) was the daughter of Benjamin
Guggenheim, one of seven brothers—including Solomon R. Guggenheim—who,
with their father, Meyer, created a family fortune in the late 19th
century from the mining and smelting of metals. After coming into her
inheritance, Peggy moved to Europe in the 1920s; there, through her
first husband, Laurence Vail, a Dada artist and writer, she became
acquainted with many of the leading figures of the avant-garde in Paris
and London, including Marcel Duchamp. She embarked upon her career as
an art patron at the age of 39, when she opened her art gallery,
Guggenheim Jeune, in London, in January 1938. The gallery mounted the
first exhibition of Vasily Kandinsky’s work in England, and served as a
catalyst for the appreciation of modern art in Britain.
In 1939, Peggy resolved to open a museum dedicated to modern art.
She enlisted the assistance of art historian Herbert Read, who was
envisioned as the museum’s future director, as well as Duchamp and
Nelly van Doesberg, the widow of abstract painter Theo van Doesberg, in
forming a list of all of the artists to be represented. This list was
to serve as the basis for her collection. Intended to be historically
comprehensive, it encompassed both abstract art and Surrealism,
distinguishing Peggy’s approach to collecting from the narrower focus on nonobjective painting that characterized Solomon’s advisor and curator, Hilla Rebay, who was vehemently opposed to Surrealism.
In 1939–40, apparently oblivious to the war, Peggy busily acquired
works for the future museum in London and Paris, keeping to her
resolution to “buy a picture a day.” Some of the masterpieces of her
collection, including works by Francis Picabia, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí and Piet Mondrian, were bought at this time. She
astonished Fernand Léger by buying his Men in the City on the day that Hitler invaded Norway. She acquired Brancusi’s Bird in Space as the Germans approached Paris.
In July 1941, Peggy fled Nazi-occupied France and returned to her
native New York, where she continued to acquire works for her
collection, and the following year, opened her museum-gallery Art of
This Century. Designed by the Romanian-Austrian architect Frederick
Kiesler, the gallery was composed of extraordinarily innovative
exhibition rooms and soon became the most stimulating venue for
contemporary art in New York City. There Peggy exhibited her
collection of Cubist, abstract and Surrealist art, and also held
temporary exhibitions of both leading European artists and several then
unknown young Americans such as Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Mark Rothko, David Hare, Clyfford Still, and Jackson Pollock.
Art of This Century provided a fertile meeting ground for European
émigré artists and their younger American counterparts, the pioneers of
the nascent New York School. Through her exhibitions, Peggy offered
pivotal encouragement and support to the development of America’s first
art movement of international importance. Her patronage of Pollock was
particularly significant; Peggy not only provided him with his first
show in 1943, but also supported him with a monthly stipend and sold a
number of his works, in addition to keeping a group of seminal paintings
for her own collection.
In 1947 Peggy returned to Europe, where her collection was shown at the 1948 Venice Biennale,
the first exhibition in Europe of the work of American artists such as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. The following year,
she bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice,
where she lived until her death. In 1949 she held an
exhibition of sculptures in the garden, and from 1951 she opened her
collection to the public.
In 1969 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum invited Peggy Guggenheim to
show her collection in New York. The success of that exhibition,
and years of courtship by museum director Thomas M. Messer and presidents Harry Guggenheim (Solomon’s nephew) and Peter
Lawson-Johnston (Solomon’s grandson) persuaded Peggy to donate her
palace and works of art to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, with
the stipulation that the collection remain in Venice. The gift was
formalized in 1976, and the foundation assumed management and full
responsibility for the collection upon her death in 1979.
With its exceptional collection of Surrealist paintings and sculpture, including iconic works by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Yves Tanguy, as well as its unparalleled concentration of painting by Jackson Pollock—from early, Picasso and Surrealist-inspired works such as The Moon Woman, to poured paintings such as Alchemy—the Peggy Guggenheim Collection enriched and filled in critical gaps in the collection that her uncle had inaugurated in New York. Independently formed and shaped by profoundly different visions, the collections of Solomon and Peggy complement one another and together help form one of the most significant collections of modern art in the world.