PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION

Description

Essentials about the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in brief

Fans of modern art should definitely see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection during a visit to Venice. The museum houses one of the most important collections of modern art in Italy and all of Europe. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni at the southern end of the Grand Canal. The palazzo was once the home of Peggy Guggenheim; it has been a museum since 1980.

The story of Peggy Guggenheim

Peggy Guggenheim came from a very wealthy American industrialist family. From the end of the 1930s, she began to focus on contemporary art and bought works by masters of the avant-garde, including Constantin Brâncuși, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Wolfgang Paalen and Pablo Picasso. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London, but it closed a year later. The plan to create a museum for contemporary art also failed at the time.

From 1942 to 1947, Guggenheim ran the avant-garde Art of This Century gallery in New York City, which was also a museum. After the gallery closed, she returned to Europe and moved to Venice, exhibiting her artwork at the Venice Biennale in 1948. In 1949, Guggenheim purchased Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal, an unfinished 18th-century palace whose construction never went beyond the first floor. In addition to their living quarters, the palace was used as exhibition space even then.

In the early 1960s, Peggy Guggenheim gave up collecting. The reason was her dislike of Pop Art and the sharp rise in prices on the market for contemporary art. In 1969, her collection was shown in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. On this occasion, Peggy Guggenheim decided to leave the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni and the collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation after her death. One condition was that the collection be preserved in Venice. Peggy Guggenheim lived in Venice until the end of her life. She is buried in the garden of the palace.

The collection of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection consists of the who’s who of the 20th century art scene. The collection is owned by star artists such as Constantin Brâncuși, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dalì, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Piet Mondiran and Pablo Picasso. In addition to the permanent collection, the Guggenheim Collection also hosts special exhibitions. The museum’s garden with its sculptures is also absolutely worth seeing.