Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venezia

Peggy Guggenheim was born in New York on 26 August 1898 and grew up in New York. In April 1912 her father died heroically on the SS Titanic. 

In her early 20s, Peggy volunteered for work at an avantegarde bookshop in New York and thanks to this began making friends in intellectual and artistic circles, including the man who was to become her first husband in Paris in 1922, Laurence Vail. 

In 1921 Peggy Guggenheim traveled to Europe. Thanks to Laurence Vail (the father of her two children Sindbad and Pegeen, the painter), Peggy soon found herself at the heart of Parisian bohème and American ex-patriate society. 

In 1937, encouraged by her friend Peggy Waldman, Peggy decided to open an art gallery in London. When she opened her Guggenheim Jeune gallery in January 1938, she was beginning, at 39 years old, a career which would significantly affect the course of post-war art. Her friend Samuel Beckett urged her to dedicate herself to contemporary art as it was “a living thing,” and Marcel Duchamp introduced her to the artists and taught her, as she put it, “the difference between abstract and Surrealist art.” 

In 1939-40, apparently oblivious of the war, Peggy busily acquired works for the future museum, keeping to her resolve to “buy a picture a day”. Some of the masterpieces of her collection, such as works by Francis Picabia, Georges Braque, Salvador Dalí and Piet Mondrian, were bought at that 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, and only then decided to flee the city.

In July 1941, Peggy fled Nazi-occupied France and returned to her native New York, together with Max Ernst, who was to become her second husband a few months later (they separated in 1943).

From July 1943 Peggy supported Jackson Pollock with a monthly stipend and actively promoted and sold his paintings.

In 1947 Peggy decided to return to Europe, where her collection was shown for the first time at the 1948 Venice Biennale, in the Greek pavilion (as the Greeks were having a civil war and didn't show up!). In this way the works of artists such as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko were exhibited for the first time in Europe. 

Soon after Peggy bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice, where she came to live. From 1951 Peggy opened her house and her collection to the public annually in the summer months. 

Peggy died aged 81 on 23 December 1979. Her ashes are placed in a corner of the garden of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, next to the place where she customarily buried her beloved dogs. Since this time, the Guggenheim Foundation has converted and expanded Peggy Guggenheim's private house into one of the finest small museums of modern art in the world.

Oval with points, Henry Moore

On the Beach, Picasso

In Peggy's throne

Charlie particularly enjoyed this gallery, she took the photos of the art works above. She had learnt about Pollack and Mondrian at Kinder (Neighbourhood House) last year and was able to recognise their paintings.