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Meet Peggy Guggenheim: Art, Ambition and a Lot of Passion


A woman in a dark dress holds a cigarette, sitting beside abstract red and teal artwork. She looks contemplative with a magazine in hand.

When the Titanic sank in 1912, one of the wealthiest men on board—Benjamin Guggenheim—reportedly dressed in his evening best, placed a rose in his lapel, and calmly accepted his fate. “We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen,” he is said to have remarked. He never made it to a lifeboat, but his daughter, 14-year-old Peggy Guggenheim, would go on to chart a very different course.


She didn’t set out to become one of the 20th century’s most important art patrons—but that’s exactly what happened.


A Fortune and a Vision

Born into wealth, Peggy inherited $2.5 million on her 21st birthday in 1919—worth roughly $40 million today. But she wasn’t interested in polite society or predictable pursuits. She wanted freedom, creativity, and expression. “I put myself on a regime to buy one picture a day,” she once recalled, a comment that hinted at both her boldness and her almost instinctive eye for modern art.


Her collection began almost accidentally. As she hosted exhibitions for friends, she started buying their work—sometimes to support them, sometimes because she couldn’t resist. One friend and early admirer was the young playwright Samuel Beckett, who encouraged her to take her collecting more seriously. It was advice she took to heart.

Woman in a shiny dress holding a cigarette, standing by a window with Notre Dame visible. Art and bottles in the cozy room. Moody vibe.
Guggenheim in Paris, c. 1930, photograph by Rogi André

Modernism on the Move

Originally, Peggy planned to open a museum in London. But with the outbreak of World War II, she relocated to Paris—a city full of artists, uncertainty, and opportunity. In the eyes of the occupying forces, abstract and surrealist art was considered subversive. Many artists were desperate to sell.


It was in this context that Guggenheim made some of her most significant acquisitions. With guidance from Marcel Duchamp, she began buying works by Man Ray, Brancusi, Tanguy, Dali, Cocteau, and Kandinsky. She was also among the first to exhibit a young Lucian Freud.


Her personal life was equally dynamic—she formed close ties with the artists she supported, often helping them financially and emotionally. While stories of her romances are widespread, what truly endured was her deep belief in the power of art as liberation. “It was my freedom, my liberation,” she later said.

Older woman in a sheer blue cape stands in a room with abstract art. Expression is thoughtful. Background includes large painting.

Flight and Foundation

By 1941, with Nazi forces advancing, Guggenheim arranged for her collection to be shipped to America. She also helped several artists—including Max Ernst—escape Europe. Her efforts weren’t just patronage; they were acts of rescue.


Once in New York, she opened The Art of This Century gallery, which quickly became a hub for European modernism and American innovation. It was here that she supported a then-unknown Jackson Pollock, providing him with a monthly stipend and exhibiting his work before most people had heard his name.


Pollock’s rise wasn’t without strain—Peggy later felt hurt by what she saw as ingratitude—but their relationship marked one of the most influential periods in American art.

A woman in sunglasses cuddles a dog by a Venetian canal. Two more dogs sit nearby. Ornate buildings and poles line the waterway.

Venice and a Lasting Legacy

After the war, Peggy returned to Europe and settled in Venice. In 1949, she moved into the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, a striking, unfinished 18th-century palace on the Grand Canal. It would become both her home and the heart of her collection.


She showcased her acquisitions at the 1948 Venice Biennale—an event that helped introduce modern American art to a European audience. Over time, she shifted from collecting to exhibiting, lending pieces to major museums and eventually donating her home and collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.


Peggy Guggenheim passed away in 1979, and her ashes were interred in the sculpture garden of her Venetian home—beside her beloved dogs.

Elderly woman with star-shaped sunglasses sits on a boat with two small dogs, holding a book. Venetian canal buildings in the background.
Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, April 1969

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection Today

Now open to the public, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of Italy’s most important museums for modern art. It includes key works in Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism—many of them bought at a time when the art world hadn’t yet caught up with her taste.


Peggy once described herself as “a midwife” for modern art. In truth, she was much more than that. She was a trailblazer who used her wealth and passion to help shape the direction of 20th-century culture.

Grave of Peggy Guggenheim with an engraved stone wall, surrounded by greenery. Flowers lie on the ground. Peaceful and solemn setting.
Peggy's grave with her dogs

References & Further Reading


Words by Anna Avis, Approachable But Still Scholarly

Contributor, UtterlyInteresting.com — exploring the strange and forgotten corners of history.



 
 
 

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