Moderne Kunst aus der Sammlung Peggy Guggenheim

There is probably no personality more vibrant than the American collector, sponsor, and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim. A niece of the famous industrialist Solomon R. Guggenheim, who is known as the founder of the eponymous New York Museum, she was born in 1889 in New York as Marguerite Guggenheim. On her death in 1979 in Camposampiero near Padua, the eccentric art-lover left one of the most significant collections of modern art. She had built up this collection mainly of European artists in Paris, where she had been living since 1920. When she was forced to flee from France due to the war, she managed to smuggle the collection into the USA, and in 1941 she founded a private museum with the name ‘Art of this Century,’ which also functioned as an art shop. Only two years after the end of the war, Peggy Guggenheim returned to Europe and settled near Venice with her collection. There parts of her collection could, or may still, be seen in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Canale Grande. With the exhibition of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection the Kunsthaus Zurich attempted to provide an overview pf contemporary modern art. Exhibited about 170 works by 87 artists representing Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism and Dadaism. Most of them were very well-known names, but they included also a few female artists, such as the Surrealists Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington, as well as Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Max Bill, who wrote the introduction to the exhibition brochure, warmly welcomed the fact that modern art could at last be seen in its full variety but at the same time was discontented that the modern was not to be found in Swiss collections, including the internal collection (‘The Kunsthaus itself is poor in such works’). Referring to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, he regretted that, although the ‘cooler mainstream’ of modern art before the exhibition, especially up to 1940 was well illustrated, in works from decade before the exhibition (meaning the 1940s) mainly the ‘expressive and unrestrained’ dominated. The Der Tages-Anzeiger referred to the show, but rather indirectly as part of a review of the exhibition ‘Surréalisme & abstraction / Surrealisme & abstractie’ with works from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which could be seen in the same year in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The exhibition was accompanied by a brochure (‘Tour Guide’) with a list of works and a shor introduction by Max Bill.