Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents “Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector”, organised by Gražina Subelytė and guest curator Simon Grant. The exhibition examines Peggy Guggenheim’s years in the United Kingdom and the activity of Guggenheim Jeune, her first gallery, which was active in London between 1938 and 1939.

Focusing on an eighteen-month period of intense experimentation, the exhibition explores how Guggenheim Jeune became a platform for avant-garde movements associated with abstraction and Surrealism, while also shaping Peggy Guggenheim’s development as a collector and patron. It considers her network of artists, writers and collaborators, including Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett and Mary Reynolds, and revisits the gallery’s exhibitions, among them Vasily Kandinsky’s first solo show in London, a monographic exhibition of Jean Cocteau, the first group exhibition dedicated to collage in the United Kingdom, and a contemporary sculpture exhibition.

Bringing together key works shown in those exhibitions, as well as related works from the same period by artists including Eileen Agar, Barbara Hepworth, Kandinsky, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Cedric Morris and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, the exhibition also includes archival material documenting this period. In Venice, the exhibition is made possible with the generous support of The KHR McNeely Family Foundation, Kevin, Rosemary and Hannah Rose McNeely. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by Marsilio Arte and by a programme of free collateral events organised with the support of Fondazione Araldi Guinetti, Vaduz.