Peggy Guggenheim
“Peggy” by Beatrice Brandini
“I wore one earring by Tanguy and one by Calder, to show my impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract art”. Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim photographed by Man Ray in 1924
Peggy Guggenheim photographed by Man Ray in 1924
Peggy Guggenheim in Venice
It ‘s just been celebrated by a documentary film “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict” by Lisa Immordino Vreeland (wife of Alexander, grandson of Diana Vreeland), where through images, testimonials, interviews, it reconstructs the life of this incredible female figure, one of the most fascinating of the twentieth century.
Peggy Guggenheim in Venice
Probably her reputation is more relevant than ever because in a time like this, uncertain, insecure, difficult, there is a greater curiosity so eccentric and independent characters, how they could take us away from everyday reality, those characters that have marked an era , becoming the same icons, just like Peggy Guggenheim.
Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy played a decisive role in the art history of the twentieth century. She has discovered and protected, dedicating to it practically her entire LIFE.
Friend of artists like Brancusi, Duchamp, Cocteau, Calder, etc., Curious and tireless collector, will open her first art gallery in London in 1938 where the first exhibition was dedicated to Jean Cocteau, the second to Vasily Kandinsky. Then inaugurate a museum, still in the “liberal” London, laying the foundation for her collection.
Determined to “buy a painting a day,” are precisely from this period the acquisitions of Picabia, Braque, Dalí, Mondrian, very important works that are still part of her extraordinary collection.
Peggy Guggenheim in Venice
During the war she returned to the native New York, helping many artists to leave occupied Europe (including Max Ernst, whom she married). Here it will seek the space to open a new museum. It will be the “Art of This Century,” in which Cubist , surrealist, abstract works alternate and complete with incredible beauty and harmony. And here, in this gallery / museum, which began the career of artists like Hare, Rothko and especially Pollock. Artists that will make the American Abstract Expressionism famous in every part of the world.
But again, in the 1947, she returned to Europe, exhibited her collection at the Venice Biennale (important event marking somehow the beginning of modernism in Italy), and in 1958 buys in Venice Palazzo Venier dei Leoni (belonged, between 1910 to 1924, to another eccentricity icon, the Countess Marchesa Luisa Casati; it is curious how sometimes certain destinies cross each other and can be accomplices), where transfers her collection which will become museum.
Lara Stone as Peggy Guggenheim, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld for Harper’s Bazaar Romania
Many are also Italians artists Peggy Guggenheim helps to raise awareness and to make known, as Tancredi and Parmeggiani.
Venice becomes the stage of her life for the last thirty years. And here which is buried with her dogs, that is where her museum continues to host (and AMAZE) visitors from around the world.
Lara Stone as Peggy Guggenheim, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld for Harper’s Bazaar Romania
Lara Stone as Peggy Guggenheim, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld for Harper’s Bazaar Romania
To those who asked if she thought she was rewarded for her generosity (because she discovered and kept many artists), Peggy replied thus: “I think the fact that they have created and donated their works to humanity is the greatest reward.”
Peggy played by Beatrice Brandini
Peggy played by Beatrice Brandini
Peggy young by Beatrice Brandini
Peggy Guggenheim was a free and curious woman, she has had the honor to meet fantastic characters, to share many projects and thus to assist their creative processes. She could enjoy life in a manner best suited to its status and then maybe “trivial”, but she chose to live with the ART, a privilege that is too often only understood by sensitive and intelligent people …
Good life to all!
Beatrice