After
her death in 1978, her Venetian home, the 18th-century Palazzo Venier dei
Leoni, was transformed into a permanent exhibition space housing the Peggy
Guggenheim Collection. It is now the second most visited museum in the city
after the Dodge’s Palace with over 427,000 visitors a year.
But
while her collection is primarily renowned for its Cubist, Surrealist and
Abstract Expressionist masterpieces, the new exhibition “Peggy Guggenheim: The
Last Dogaressa” – running until January 27, 2020 - is aiming to showcase how wide
her collecting endeavour span, highlighting some of her lesser known collecting
interest.
“The
exhibition shed light on how she significantly continued to add works to her
collection during her thirty years in Venice,” explains Karole Vail, the director
of the Collection, a former curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for 20
years, and Peggy’s grand-daughter.
“She
continued to add significantly once she arrived in Venice and her choices were
varied and eclectic,” she adds. Her purchases included works by Italian artists
active from the late 1940s, such as Edmondo Bacci, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Emilio
Vedova; British painting and sculpture of the 1950s and 60s, with pieces by
Lynn Chadwick, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, Optical (Op) and Kinetic art of
the 1960s as well as works by the CoBrA group, a short-lived (1948-1951) but
influential avant-garde movement in Paris, known for their spontaneous and
colourful work heavily inspired by the art of children and the mentally ill.
“The
exhibition also highlights how she was a supporter and collector of works by
women abstract artists, but also had an interest “in contemporary takes on
Japanese aesthetics,” says Vail, pointing to works such as Above the White
(1960) by the Japanese-born American painter Kenzo Okada and Drifting No 2.
(1959) by the Japanese sculptor Tomonori Toyofuku.
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Pierre Alechinsky, Dressing Gown,
1972
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A Bridge Character
In
her own words, Guggengheim was an “art addict,” who couldn’t help herself and
her unrelentless collecting of what was “in the now” means her collection
offers a bridge between Surrealist to Abstract Expressionist.
“She
trusted her intuition in making her purchases, but was also wise to surround
herself with the best advisors. She trusted their opinion. One might say, her
collection reflects her personal taste, guided by their sound advice,” Vail
says.
The
daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim and niece of Solomon Guggenheim (founder of the
famous New York museum), Peggy inherited 450,000 (the equivalent of about $6.4
million) when she was 21 after her father died on board the Titanic. The
passing of her mother in 1937 left her an annual income of about $40,000 a year
(roughly $675,000) which she used wisely to feed her life-long obsession.
She
acquired a large part of a collection which is today estimated to be worth
billions of dollars for a mere $40,000, when right before the onset of the
Second World War she had the foresight to assiduously buy “a picture a
day.” On the advice of several friends who guided her choices, including
Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett and art historian Sir Herbert Read, she went to
artists’ studios buying directly from them, and as the war looming, she found
artists were keen to sell and the prices were cheap as buyers were few.
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Jackson Pollock, Circumcision,
gennaio / January 1946
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During
the last months before Paris fell to the Germans, she bought 50 works,
including pieces by Brancusis, Georges Braque, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert
Delaunay, Giacometti, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Rays, Joan
Miro, Piet Mondrian, and Francis Picabia, amongst others.
After
the war, she paid close attention to the advice of Mondrian, who pointed to her
the work of Pollock which she duly started to support, giving him a monthly
income and some money to buy a house in Long Island to he would have peace and
quiet to pain.
The Audacious Gallerist
Between
1938 and 1939, she ran the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London, located at 30
Cork Street, championing the work of Jean Cocteau, Alexander Calder and Henry
Moore, among others. She gave the first public airing to Lucian Freud in an
exhibition of children’s art and organized the first solo exhibition of Vasily
Kandinsky in the British capital.
“She
dedicated herself to contemporary art, as it was “a living thing,” and she was
not afraid to take risks in supporting artists that were not yet established at
the time. Even if modern art perplexed much of the public at that time, her
commitment and resolve to promote the most contemporary art of her time was
unshakable,” remarks Vail.
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Francis Bacon
Study
for Chimpanzee / March 1957
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Between
1942 and 1947, Guggenheim also ran the ground-breaking Art of The Century
museum-cum-gallery on 57th Street, where she exhibited her collection and works
by such emerging artists as Pollock and Motherwell, giving them their first
solo show.
“Her
progressive character was reflected not only in her art and exhibition choices,
but also in the way she installed works,” says Vail, pointing out how the
gallery space designed by the visionary architect Frederick Kiesler offered
innovative exhibition rooms. For instance, the black wall of the Surrealist
Gallery displayed unframed Surrealist paintings mounted on adjustable arms
attached to the concave walls, made of eucalyptus, while the Abstract gallery
had movable walls made of stretched deep blue canvas and its floors were
painted turquoise, Peggy's favorite color. Unframed pictures 'swaying in space'
at eye level were actually mounted on triangular floor-to-ceiling rope pulleys,
Vail says.
Supporting Women Artists
Her
support for the women in the art world was important, as she organized in New
York two seminal exhibitions 31 Women in 1943 and The Women in 1945. The first
exhibition brought together Frida Kaldo, Dorothea Tanning, Sophie Tacuber Arp,
Louise Nevelson, and Leonara Carrington, and she also gave solo exhibitions to
Janet Sobel, Teresa Zarnower, Sonja Sekula and Virginia Admiral, while
personally collection works by Grace Hartigan and Irene Rice Pereira (which
will be on display at the exhibition).
“She
showed women’s substantial contributions to the most advanced movements of the
day, even if not everyone understood this back then. Her exhibitions served as
a key starting point for the careers of many women and Art of This Century
became a key space to set the discourse on gender that continues to this day,”
Vail says.
This story was first published in the November edition of A: The First of magazine
This story was first published in the November edition of A: The First of magazine