Peggy Guggenheim

Peggy Guggenheim, actually Marguerite Guggenheim ( born August 26, 1898 in New York, USA; † 23 December 1979 Camposampiero of Padua, Italy) was an American self-taught art patron, collector and gallery of 20th century art.

Life

Origin

Peggy Guggenheim was one of three daughters of the New York businessman Benjamin Guggenheim and his wife Florette Seligman. Her father was descended from one of the wealthiest industrial families of America; he came in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic died. My uncle was the American industrialist and art collector Solomon R. Guggenheim, founder of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Guggenheim in New York and Paris

When Peggy Guggenheim came of age in August 1919, she received an inheritance of 450,000 dollars, which they made ​​independently from her family. In the fall of 1920 she went to an internship at the bookstore " Sunwise Turn" in New York, where she met many intellectuals and artists. In December of that year she was operating her nose, but since plastic surgery was still in its infancy, failed the operation.

In 1921, Guggenheim moved to Paris, enjoying the bohemian lifestyle and met many artists and writers, with whom she befriended, among them, for example, Djuna Barnes, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, who in 1924 created a series of portraits of her. In 1922 she married the French painter and sculptor Laurence Vail; from this connection come from her two children Sindbad (1923-1986) and Pegeen Vail ( 1926-1967 ). After eight years of marriage ended in divorce. Vail tended drunk at the violence, and they had the British writer John Holms (* 1897), Laid, an alcoholic, died in the year 1934.

Guggenheim Jeune Gallery, London

Guggenheim began on the advice of Samuel Beckett, with whom she from December 1937 had a brief affair to deal with contemporary art and bought avant-garde works, including Constantin Brancusi by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso. Duchamp gave her advice at the opening of her gallery Guggenheim Jeune, 30 Cork Street, London, which took place on 24 January 1938, a Jean Cocteau exhibition. It required before a complete introductory course in modern art by Duchamp, for Guggenheim had, as she confessed, no prior knowledge about it: "I could not distinguish a modern work of others." Next came a Kandinsky exhibition, and in June 1938 she presented works by Yves Tanguy from, with whom she, much to the displeasure of Tanguy's former wife, Jeanette, had an affair. As she once Kandinsky please her uncle Solomon R. Guggenheim a picture of the painter, which her ​​uncle had asked earlier for being with Hilla Rebay 1939 opened small museum, the Museum of Non - Objective Painting, offered in Manhattan, she received a brusque rejection letter Rebay, after which commercial offers were not welcome. In 1939, Guggenheim closed the gallery again, because this - despite major media attention that accompanied their exhibitions - was not profitable. Guggenheim returned to Paris. There they advanced at the beginning of the Second World War their collection day, as many artists wanted to leave the city and sell their paintings. Under the guidance of Marcel Duchamp and Howard Putzel, a young art dealer from California, bought for less than $ 40,000 the basis of their large collection of modern art, including Braque, Max Ernst, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Miro. They had no idea that it had acquired art at bargain basement prices, she said later. "I just paid what I was told. "

Escape to the United States

The American journalist Varian Fry in Marseille initiated a relief committee, the Emergency Rescue Committee, to allow refugees to exit from the French Vichy regime. Guggenheim assisted the Committee in December 1940 with a sum of 500,000 francs. Among the emigrants were artists such as Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz and. Guggenheim financed for example, the departure of Max Ernst, whose work was denounced as "degenerate art", and the surrealist writer André Breton and his family. But Guggenheim, who was of Jewish descent, had to leave with their collection and France flew in July 1941 with Max Ernst, with whom she was friends from Estoril to New York. Your art collection she had sent separately. In December 1941, shortly after Christmas, her marriage to Max Ernst took place.

Museum and gallery Art of This Century, New York

In New York, the Guggenheim opened in 1942, again a gallery, Art of This Century in 30 West 57th Street, which was also a museum, and promoted emigrated from Europe as well as new American artists - including Jackson Pollock. In January 1943 the exhibition there was " Exhibition by 31 Women" held in their preparation, Max Ernst fell in love with the painter Dorothea Tanning, which led to a break in 1946 and the marriage relationship to divorce. The gallery, furnished by the architect Frederick Kiesler, existed until 31 May 1947. This year Peggy Guggenheim returned to Europe and moved to Venice.

Return to Europe

In 1948, Guggenheim was invited to exhibit their art collection at the Biennale of Venice. It was in the Greek pavilion, the vacancy due to the civil war, was presented. In the same year she had the unfinished Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal acquired with garden from the 18th century and it rebuilt. Since 1949, she took advantage of him at the same time as a residence and as an occasional exhibition space of its collection, which was available in the summer months to the public as early as 1951.

The Tate Gallery in London presented from January to March 1965, the largest part of Guggenheim's collection and honored her with a banquet. In 1969, she was from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, invited to show her collection there. At this time she decided to bequeath her ​​art collection and the Palace of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Peggy Guggenheim died in 1979. Their grave and the grave of her beloved dogs, Lhasa Dogs, located on the grounds of the Museum Gardens ( later called the Nasher Sculpture Garden ) in Venice. In the rooms of the palace housing the Peggy Guggenheim Collection has been housed since 1980, further exhibiting her collection.

Your busy life Guggenheim wrote the first time in 1946 in the autobiography Out of This Century down. 1960 appeared to the private details abridged and to art-related supplements advanced work again under the title Confessions of an Art Addict. A final edition was published posthumously in 1980.

Many of her works are collected by today accessible in museums; except the already mentioned Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, it is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao.

Peggy Guggenheim was the mother of the French painter Jean Hélion, who was married to her daughter Pegeen 1946-1958.

Personality

Guggenheim saw himself as a "poor Guggenheim ", which was not entirely wrong because of the relatively small heritage, but continued to enjoy, " in opposition to the uppermost layer of the society into which she was born ," their privileges. In contrast to " other Guggenheim, who founded charities with the help of the family assets ," Peggy Guggenheim's " not the form of an institution, and was also very personally. " Took She distanced herself from the beginning of the existing standards, and their interest in the person the artist usually went their employment ahead with the artwork. Due to the disregard of all conventions it was regarded as a rebel, ( expert in matters of taste ) became the " arbiter elegantiarum " and " was in her adopted home of Italian as l' ultima finally dogaressa " (the last dogaressa ).

Film

In the movie Pollock, an American biography of the American painter Jackson Pollock in 2000, Guggenheim plays an important role, it is represented by Amy Madigan. Directed by co-star Ed Harris.