Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni with the museum

View from the Grand Canal into the museum. The sculpture L'Angelo della Città is a work by Marino Marini , 1948, cast in bronze around 1950

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a collection of modern art in Venice . The collection is in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal . The museum opened in 1980.

history

Peggy Guggenheim began collecting modern art in 1938 and opened the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London that year. In 1939 she closed the gallery again, and the plan to create a museum for contemporary art failed.

In July 1941, Peggy Guggenheim fled Europe with Max Ernst to New York. From 1942 to 1947 she ran the avant-garde Art of This Century gallery , which was also a museum, in Manhattan . After the gallery closed, she returned to Europe and moved to Venice. In 1948 she exhibited at the Biennale of their art works in Venice. In 1949 she acquired the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal, an unfinished palace from the 18th century, the construction of which never extended beyond the ground floor. In addition to their living rooms, the palace was also used as an exhibition space back then. Peggy Guggenheim lived in Venice until the end of her life. She is buried next to her dogs in the palace garden, later called the Nasher Sculpture Garden.

In the early 1960s, Peggy Guggenheim gave up collecting. The reason was their aversion to Pop Art and the sharp rise in prices in the contemporary art market. In 1969 her collection was shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. 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 should be preserved in Venice.

Collection and exhibitions

In the museum you can see works of art by Pablo Picasso , Max Ernst , Wassily Kandinsky , Piet Mondrian and Hans Arp, among others. In addition to the permanent collection, special exhibitions are shown. For example:

• 2011: Ileana Saturday . An Italian Portrait

literature

• Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 2007, ISBN 0-89207-183-4
• Milton Esterow: The Bitter Legal Battle over Peggy Guggenheim's Blockbuster Art Collection . Feature in Vanity Fair , published in January 2017 as well as in the online edition.

Web links

Commons : Peggy Guggenheim Collection  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the museum (English and Italian)

Coordinates: 45 ° 25 ′ 50 ″  N , 12 ° 19 ′ 53 ″  E