Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
TOP SIGHT
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION
After tragically losing her father on the Titanic, heiress Peggy Guggenheim be-
friended Dadaists, dodged Nazis and changed art history at her palatial home on the
Grand Canal. Peggy's Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is a showcase for surrealism, futurism
and abstract expressionism by some 200 breakthrough modern artists, including
Peggy's ex-husband Max Ernst and Jackson Pollock (among her many rumoured lov-
ers).
Collection
Peggy collected according to her own convictions rather than for prestige or style, so her
collection includes inspired folk art and lesser-known artists alongside Kandinsky, Picasso,
Man Ray, Rothko, Mondrian, Joseph Cornell and Dalí. Major modernists also contributed
custom interior decor, including the Calder silver bedstead hanging in the former bedroom.
In the corners of the main galleries, you'll find photos of the rooms as they appeared when
Peggy lived here, in fabulously eccentric style.
For this champion of modern art who'd witnessed the dangers of censorship and party-
line dictates, serious artwork deserved to be seen and judged on its merits. The Jewish
American collector narrowly escaped Paris two days before the Nazis marched into the
city, and arrived in Venice in 1948 to find the city's historically buoyant spirits broken by
war. More than a mere tastemaker, Peggy became a spirited advocate for contemporary
Italian art, which had largely gone out of favour with the rise of Mussolini and the partisan
politics of WWII.
Peggy sparked renewed interest in postwar Italian art and resurrected the reputation of
key Italian Futurists, whose dynamic style had been co-opted to make Fascism more visu-
ally palatable. Her support led to reappraisals of Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio Morandi, Gi-
acomo Balla, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Giorgio de Chirico, and aided Venice's own Emilio
Vedova and Giuseppe Santomaso. Never afraid to make a splash, Peggy gave passing gon-
doliers an eyeful on her Grand Canal quay: Marino Marini's 1948
Angel of the City
, a
bronze male nude on horseback visibly excited by the possibilities on the horizon.
Garden & Pavilion
