The Magic Attic Admires, Vol. 1: Peggy Guggenheim

The beginning of a series introducing you to people, places, and things that are wild, colorful, Bohemian, weird, and wonderful.

Peggy Guggenheim was all of the above. The daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, the man who went down on the Titanic "dressed like a gentleman," she was born into wealth. She wasn't a lackadaisical dilettante heiress who just enjoyed the inheritance, though. Peggy had a vision, and that vision was art. She was focused on spreading it far and wide and introducing people specifically to modern art.

Peggy, photographed by Man Ray

She moved from New York to Paris in 1920 after leaving the employ of an "avant garde bookshop" at age 22, already living a romantic Bohemian life (working anywhere at her level of wealth was already considered eccentric). While she lived in Paris, Man Ray photographed her. Over the next 20 years, she moved around nearly the entirety of Europe, befriending many artists and authors.

Later, she opened a gallery in London that showed promise. To flesh out the gallery's collections, she bought art - famously, a painting a day - from artists in Paris. When the second world war broke out, getting herself, her artist friends and family - not to mention all that art - out of Paris became paramount. She hid the art the best she could from the Nazis, ultimately smuggling it out of Paris labeled as household goods and under a non-Jewish name. She then closed the London gallery and managed to get her friends and family safely to New York, where she started a new modern art gallery (Art of This Century). She exhibited works there by Jackson Pollack, Salvador Dali, and both of the actor Robert DeNiro's parents, Robert DeNiro, Sr. & Virginia Admiral, among others.

After the war ended, she moved to Venice, where she'd spend the rest of her long life. She bought an unfinished palazzo right on the Grand Canal and moved in, turning it into an internationally important modern art museum that is still there to this day and is on my personal bucket list to visit. Coincidentally, among the former owners of this palazzo is another person that The Magic Attic Admires: The Marchesa Luisa Casati, who will be covered in a later post.

Exhibited artists there include Dali, Picasso, Miro, Magritte, Kandinsky, Mondrian and many more names you both know and may not yet. It is the most visited art museum in Venice.

She had legendary affairs, kept many small dogs, and went out every night via her personal gondola to admire the sunset. She dressed eccentrically and was especially known for her butterfly sunglasses.

She led a thoroughly romantic and exciting life and made art the center of it, creating something that would long outlast her.

The Magic Attic Art Co. truly admires Ms. Peggy Guggenheim.

For further information:

Short form video: Peggy Guggenheim by Dr. Megan Lorraine Debin

Documentary: Peggy Guggenheim, Art Addict

Podcast: I Wanted To Be Free by Chora Media and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.