Peggy Guggenheim

Peggy Guggenheim is a collector and patron American born the August 26th 1898 with New York and dead the December 23rd 1979.

Biography

Peggy Guggenheim is the girl of the business man Benjamin Guggenheim and his wife, Floretta Seligman, girl of a New Yorkean banking rich person. She is also the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, creator of the Fondation Solomon R. Guggenheim. She loses her father in 1912 in the shipwreck of the Titanic.

In 1919, when it reaches its majority, Peggy reaches its share of fortune, substantial but quite lower than that of the other branches of the family Guggenheim, her father having wasted part of its fortune in Paris. The first thing which the young woman makes is then a great voyage through the the United States, of the Chutes of the Niagara at the Mexican border . Employee in an art bookstore, it becomes acquainted with members of the artistic avant-garde.

During the winter 1920, it is bored and decides to undergo an intervention of cosmetic surgery to modify its nose. The operation is a failure and it is found with a profile quite worse than the precedent.

In Paris, with age the 23 years, Peggy dreams to lose its virginity and decides to try out various sexual positions (discoveries in a book on the frescos of Pompéi). It throws its reserved on Laurence Vail, called “king de Montparnasse” or the “king of the Bohème”. He becomes her husband and the father of his two children. It binds friendship with Constantin Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp inter alia and collects works of the most innovative artists of the time.

In 1928, with Saint-Tropez, it meets John Holms, an alcoholic writer. The love at first sight leads them to leave their respective families. Peggy always presented Holms like the love of its life. He died in 1934 of a Heart attack at the end of an intervention.

In October 1942, it opens its gallery Art off this century has New York, where it made known and supported Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock like all the movement abstract expressionnist.

In 1948, Peggy Guggenheim turns over to Europe and decides to live with Venice, in the palate Venier dei Leoni which it buys. It continues to buy and collect the art of its time.

She lives in Venice until her death on December 23rd 1979. Its ashes are then buried in the garden of its palate, at the sides of the burials of its many dogs and not far from a tree planted by Yoko Ono.

After its death, the Fondation Guggenheim includes the palate Venier dei Leoni and the Collection Peggy Guggenheim which is exposed there in this place open to the public.

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