Peggy Guggenheim was one of the 20th century's most prominent
collectors of modern art. Born in 1898 into the Jewish-American
Guggenheims, Peggy lost her father on the Titanic and inherited a
fortune. She moved to Paris in the 1930s, involved herself in the
bohemian lifestyle of the American expatriate community and used
her money to gain a foothold in the male art world by supporting
artists and writers and assembling a formidable collection of works
by Cubists and Surrealists. An independent woman, she also had
relationships with, among others, Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy and
Max Ernst, whom she married. After her escape from Vichy France,
she opened the pioneering Art Of This Century Gallery in 1940s New
York. Here, she was one of the first collectors to champion the
Abstract Expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock, and her
salons allowed exiled European avant-garde painters to meet their
younger American counterparts. Peggy spent the final years of her
life in Venice, a city she loved, where she played host to a
passing parade of the rich and famous and where, after her lonelier
later years and her death in 1979, her collection was kept in her
palazzo where it can now be seen. Anton Gill is a contemporary
historian and provides a fast-moving and entertaining account of
Peggy Guggenheim's life derived from both public and private
archives. He is particularly strong on the way anti-semitism shaped
her family history. The original Guggenheims moved to America to
escape restrictions on Jews. Yet, ironically, Peggy preferred
Europe because of the anti-semitism she encountered in the USA.
Gill is also strong on art history and seems to revel in the
anecdotes which surround the legend of Peggy and her many friends
and lovers. This is an interesting and informative life of a
formidable woman. (Kirkus UK)
"Often touching and always richly entertaining, like its subject"
HILARY SPURLING, 'Daily Telegraph'
Peggy Guggenheim's tempestuous life spanned the most exciting and volatile years of the twentieth century, and she lived it to the full. 'Mrs Guggenheim, how many husbands have you had?', she was once asked. 'Do you mean my own, or other people's?'.
It was among the American expatriate bohemian set in Paris in the 1930's that the young heiress began to make her mark in the art world. Her many lovers included Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst (whom she later married), Yves Tanguy and Roland Penrose. Yet real love always seemed to elude her.
In the later 1930's Peggy set up one of the first galleries of modern art in London, building up a magnificent collection of works by Picasso, Magritte, Miro and Brancusi, and buying paintings from artists fleeing the Nazis. Escaping from Vichy France to New York, she was hugely influential in assisting the new American abstract Impressionist movement (in particular, Jackson Polluck). After the war she returned to Europe, living in Venice until the end of her life. Today her memory is enshrined in the world-famous palazzo that houses her collection.
Meticulously researched, filled with colourful incident and a distinguished cast list, Anton Gill's biography reveals the inner drives of a remarkable woman and an indefatigable patron.
"Anton Gill tells this extraordinary story with vigour and panache"
SELINA HASTINGS, 'Sunday Telegraph'
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