27 Facts About Peggy Guggenheim

Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector, bohemian, and socialite.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a modern art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, and is one of the most visited attractions in the city.

Peggy Guggenheim's mother, Florette Seligman, was a member of the Seligman family.

Peggy Guggenheim had a sister, Barbara Hazel Guggenheim, who became a painter and art collector.

Peggy Guggenheim first worked as a clerk in an avant-garde bookstore, the Sunwise Turn, in Midtown Manhattan, where she became enamored of the members of the bohemian artistic community.

Peggy Guggenheim became close friends with writer Natalie Barney and artist Romaine Brooks and was a regular at Barney's salon.

Peggy Guggenheim met Djuna Barnes during this time and in time, became her friend and patron.

Barnes wrote her best-known novel, Nightwood, while staying at the Devon country house, Hayford Hall, that Peggy Guggenheim had rented for two summers.

Peggy Guggenheim urged Emma Goldman to write her autobiography and helped to secure funds for her to live in Saint-Tropez, France, while writing her two volume Living My Life.

Peggy Guggenheim wrote her autobiography entitled Out of This Century, later revised and re-published as Confessions of an Art Addict that was released in 1946 and is published by Harper Collins.

In January 1938, Peggy Guggenheim opened a gallery for modern art in London featuring Jean Cocteau drawings in its first show, and she began to collect works of art.

Peggy Guggenheim often purchased at least one object from each of her exhibitions at the gallery.

Peggy Guggenheim taught her about contemporary art and styles and he conceived several of the exhibitions held at Guggenheim Jeune.

Peggy Guggenheim held group exhibitions of sculpture and collage, with the participation of the now-classic moderns Antoine Pevsner, Henry Moore, Henri Laurens, Alexander Calder, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Constantin Brancusi, John Ferren, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Kurt Schwitters.

Peggy Guggenheim greatly admired the work of John Tunnard and is credited with his discovery in mainstream international modernism.

Peggy Guggenheim closed Peggy Guggenheim Jeune with a farewell party on 22 June 1939, at which colour portrait photographs by Gisele Freund were projected onto the walls.

Peggy Guggenheim set aside $40,000 for its operating expenses these funds were soon overstretched by the ambitions of the organizers.

Peggy Guggenheim had to abandon her plans for a Paris museum a few days before the Germans reached Paris and she fled to the south of France, from where, after months of safeguarding her collection and artist friends, she left Europe for Manhattan in the summer of 1941.

Peggy Guggenheim had assembled her collection in only seven years.

Peggy Guggenheim's collection became one of the few European collections of modern art to promote a significant number of works by Americans.

Peggy Guggenheim became acquainted with painter and sculptor Edward Melcarth, a fellow American hailing from Louisville, Kentucky.

Peggy Guggenheim loaned out her collection to museums in Europe and in 1969 to the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, which was named after her uncle.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of the most important museums in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the twentieth century.

Peggy Guggenheim lived in Venice until her death in Camposampiero near Padua, Italy, following a stroke.

Peggy Guggenheim's ashes are interred next to her dogs in the garden of her home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.

Peggy Guggenheim then lived with the writer and Communist activist Douglas Garman for several years.

Peggy Guggenheim married her second husband, artist Max Ernst, in 1941 and divorced him in 1946.