Peggy Guggenheim

• Born: August 26, 1898
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: December 23, 1979
• Place of death: Padua, Italy

Art collector and philanthropist

Guggenheim was an art collector who anticipated the importance of European modernism and surrealism by being among the first to buy and to exhibit works by artists in these styles. Her home in Venice, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, became a living museum, where she displayed her famous art collection.

Areas of achievement: Art; philanthropy

Early Life

Peggy Guggenheim (GEW-gehn-him) was born in New York, New York, the second of three daughters of Benjamin and Florette. Both sides of Guggenheim’s family were wealthy Jewish families who emigrated from Europe to the United States in the nineteenth century because of restrictions placed on Jews with regard to business practices. Her paternal grandfather, Meyer Guggenheim, immigrated to Philadelphia in 1848 from the German part of Switzerland and made his fortune in silver and lead mines in Colorado. The Seligman family immigrated to the United States in 1837 from Germany and rose to great wealth in the United States during and after the Civil War. Guggenheim’s maternal grandfather, James Seligman, helped to found the banking firm J. and W. Seligman with his brothers in New York in 1864. Guggenheim’s older sister, Benita, to whom she was very close, was born in 1895, and her younger sister, Hazel, was born in 1903. Guggenheim’s father died on the Titanic in 1912.

As a child, Guggenheim was an avid reader and was fortunate to be able to travel in Europe and to visit museums there. In 1914, she graduated from the Jacobi School in New York, a Jewish school for girls. After this, Guggenheim worked with tutors, who focused her education on history, economics, and Italian. In 1919, Guggenheim turned twenty-one and gained direct control of the income from her trust, which was then worth $450,000. A decisive experience in Guggenheim’s early cultural development was her time working in 1920 at her cousin Harold Loeb’s progressive Sunwise Turn bookshop in Manhattan, a gathering place for avant-garde culture, with art exhibitions and literary readings.

Guggenheim wanted to avoid the fate of women of upper-class Jewish families in New York, which was to devote themselves to raising their children and running a household. In 1920, Guggenheim left for Europe, where she believed she could escape the social conventions of American society and have a freer and more interesting life. She lived in France and England until the summer of 1941. Arriving in Paris, Guggenheim met and married her first husband, the American expatriate writer and artist, Lawrence Vail, in 1922, whom she first had met at the Sunwise Turn bookshop in New York. While married to Vail, who was known as the King of Bohemia, Guggenheim first met some of the avant-garde figures of the Paris artistic and literary worlds, such as artist Man Ray, designer Mina Loy, photographer Berenice Abbott, writer Djuna Barnes, and artist Marcel Duchamp. Guggenheim stayed friends with Barnes for much of her life and supported her with a stipend; Duchamp became a lifelong mentor in her artistic endeavors. Although her marriage to Vail was tempestuous, it produced her two children, Sinbad and Pegeen. In 1928, Guggenheim fell in love with English writer John Holmes and in 1930 began proceedings to divorce Vail. She received custody of their daughter Pegeen. After the divorce came through, Guggenheim moved to England with Holmes, through whom she began to meet people in Britain’s literary world. While Holmes was a brilliant man and Guggenheim called him “the love of her life,” he was unsuccessful in his writing endeavors and was an alcoholic. Holmes died in 1934.

Life’s Work

In 1937, Guggenheim’s mother died in New York, leaving Guggenheim $500,000 from her estate in trust, which produced additional investment income. With the advice of Duchamp and the urging of her friend, the playwright Samuel Beckett, and the help of her contacts in Paris, Guggenheim decided to open a gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, at 30 Cork Street in London’s Piccadilly. Her gallery would contribute to the growing appreciation of modern art in England. Duchamp’s influence on Guggenheim was significant during this period; he taught her the difference between European abstract art and surrealist art, and he introduced her to many of the artists she would exhibit and collect. In her gallery in 1938, expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky had his first solo exhibition in England. Exhibitions that followed included those featuring contemporary sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Antoine Pevsner. Contemporary painting exhibitions included the works of surrealists Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Yves Tanguy. On exhibit also were collages by Arp, Ernst, and Kurt Schwitters. While her gallery was a critical success, Guggenheim was forced to close it in 1939 because she was losing money. Guggenheim then asked her friend, the English art historian Herbert Read, about founding a museum of modern art in London, with Read as the director. However, as World War II began, this idea was abandoned.

Undeterred by the war, Guggenheim decided to return to Paris to assemble an important collection of modern art with the idea of eventually founding a museum. With a list compiled by Read and revised by Duchamp and her friend, Nelly van Doesburg (artist Theo van Doesburg’s wife), Guggenheim began to visit artists and dealers to buy artworks, with a goal to buy one work of art each day. Guggenheim acquired fifty works of art before Paris fell to the Germans, including Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Woman with Her Throat Cut, Brancusi’s sculpture Bird in Space, and works from artists Tanguy, Kandinsky, and Ernst (whom she later married in New York). Because of the uncertainty of war, art was available and inexpensive. In 1941, however, Guggenheim realized it was advisable to leave Europe because of the war, and her art collection was sent to Grenoble, in southeastern France, for safekeeping (before later being transported to New York). She arranged transport to New York for herself, her children, Vail and his wife, writer Kay Boyle, surrealist André Breton and his wife, and Ernst.

After arriving in New York, Guggenheim pursued the idea of establishing a museum of modern art in the United States. Because of World War II, New York was home to many displaced surrealists and other European artists. First, Guggenheim published a catalog of her collection called Art of This Century (1942). Then, in 1942, she opened a gallery at 30 West Fifty-seventh Street, also called the Art of This Century, which functioned as a museum space as well as a commercial art gallery. At this time there were no more than twelve other art galleries in New York City. The gallery, with movable walls made of stretched canvas and a turquoise floor, was innovative in its presentation of art. The surrealist portion of the gallery was painted black with cantilevered, curved walls. There was a room for kinetic art with interactive displays, and there were biomorphic wooden furniture units that displayed sculpture.

From 1942 to 1947, Guggenheim’s gallery showcased numerous contemporary artists. Duchamp, Louise Nevelson, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso were some of the artists shown during the first year. In 1943, a Spring Salon for Young Artists showcased little known artists who later became esteemed figures in American art, such as William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, and Ad Reinhardt. The fall of 1943 saw the first solo exhibition of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. Based on this exhibit, in 1944, the Museum of Modern Art bought its first Pollock painting, She Wolf. In the 1944-1945 season, painter Mark Rothko was also given his first solo exhibition. In 1946, Guggenheim published Out of This Century: The Informal Memoirs of Peggy Guggenheim.

Guggenheim always missed living in Europe, and in May, 1947, she closed the doors of her gallery to return. She settled in Venice, and in 1948 she purchased the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal. In the 1950’s and the 1960’s, Guggenheim’s collection at her palazzo in Venice became well known, and she hosted many famous visitors. During the fall and winter, art in Guggenheim’s collection was loaned to international museum exhibitions; in the spring and summer, her collection was open, free of charge, to the public three afternoons a week. In 1969, her collection was shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. This was a precursor to an agreement that on July 17, 1975, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the palazzo would be transferred to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. After Guggenheim’s death on December 23, 1979, from a stroke, the collection officially became a part of the Guggenheim Museum.

Significance

Guggenheim was a visionary art collector who, in her gallery, exhibited European surrealist and modernist art alongside emerging American artists. She gave the renowned painter Pollock his first exhibition, promoting his career and supporting him financially with a stipend. She also gave Rothko his first exhibition. A number of other abstract expressionist artists she exhibited became well known. After settling in Venice in her palazzo on the Grand Canal, Guggenheim and her art collection attracted attention worldwide. She generously loaned her artworks to museums for part of the year, and she transformed her palazzo into a public museum the rest of the year.

Bibliography

Dearborn, Mary V. Mistress of Modernism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Dearborn had unprecedented access to the Guggenheim family, friends, and archival papers.

Gill, Anton. Art Lover: A Biography of Peggy Guggenheim. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. An earlier, comprehensive biography covering all aspects of the life of Peggy Guggenheim drawn from interviews with family and friends and from public and private archives, diaries, and unpublished and published works.

Guggenheim, Peggy. Art of this Century. 1942. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1968. Published as a catalog of Guggenheim’s art collection. Essays on surrealism by Breton and on abstract art by Arp and Piet Mondrian are included. Statements by other artists augment the catalog entries of the artworks.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict. Garden City, N.Y.: Universe Books, 1980. Guggenheim’s autobiography recounting her experiences in the art world and her relationships with husbands, friends, and lovers.

Vail, Karole B. P. Peggy Guggenheim: A Celebration. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Guggenheim museums, this work includes an essay by Peggy Guggenheim’s granddaughter, Karole Vail, and former Guggenheim Museum director, Thomas Messer.