While, in part because her father died heroically on the Titanic, Peggy didn't have the funds of many Guggenheims who, when World War 1 started, owned 70% of the lead, copper and silver in the world, she combined honed her unerring eye with great teachers who included husbands Laurence Vail, a Dada sculptor, and Surrealist painter Max Ernst. Only Peggy could have seen in the unfinished one-story Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal that became her home after WW II, the best small museum in the world.
Her art and generous lifestyle reflected her unique nature. She had the confidence of the rich and beautiful: the wonderful Man Ray photo of her in the Museum's guide, shows an elegant, slender charmer in a gold lame' dress with a Stravinsky top who quite fit into the Paris of the 1920s with her first of three husbands, Laurence Vail. Later photos almost always showed her in high fashion with small pups.
But she was more than a rich dilettante. She worked at her art. For example, in 1939, as WW II loomed, she'd opened Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in London with Jean Cocteau, and followed up with the first British showing of Vasily Kandinsky, sculpture by Brancusi, paintings by Duchamp and works of Henry Moore and others.
She bought the best works of these artists like the wonderful "The Sun in its Jewel Case." By 1939 she noted, "I felt that if I was losing that money I might as well lose a lot more and do something worthwhile." So between 1939 and 1942 she bought the modern art the Nazi's so hated. It forms the basis of her collection and contributes so to other Guggenheim museums. Miro', Picasso, Braque, Margritte, Gris, Dali' and husband Max Ernst's paintings were but samples. It's worth nothing that Ernst's Surreal "Attirement of the Bride and The Antipope" demonstrate his impeccable hand and contrast nicely with his earlier works.
Go To Page: 1 2
