VENICE - In August 2010, on the occasion of Peggy Guggenheim’s birthday and the 30th Anniversary of the museum, the the Peggy Guggenheim Collection launched the project “A Gift for Peggy”, a fund-raising campaign to make possible the purchase of two pairs of earrings that once belonged to Peggy and which were created for her by Yves Tanguy and another pair by Alexander Calder.
The project has succeeded, and collector members of ARTKABINETT social network are cordially invited to view these jewels if they are visiting the Venice Biennale this summer.
Peggy wore one each of these on October 20 1942 at the inauguration of her historic Guggenheim Museum of Art to declare her impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract art.
The museum announced that the first pair of earrings, painted by Yves Tanguy, have at last returned “home” thanks to the generosity of the members and friends of the museum who, with their enthusiasm, have added a new and intriguing episode to Peggy’s story which is told by works of art.
Yves Tanguy's paintings have a unique, immediately recognizable style of nonrepresentational surrealism. They show vast, abstract landscapes, mostly in a tightly limited palette of colors, only occasionally showing flashes of contrasting color accents. Typically, these alien landscapes are populated with various abstract shapes, sometimes angular and sharp as shards of glass, sometimes with an intriguingly organic look to them, like giant amoebae suddenly turned to stone.
The earrings will be on display in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni until late September, when they will travel to Basel for the exhibition Surrealism in Paris at the Beyeler Foundation, opening October 2, in which an entire gallery will be dedicated to Peggy Guggenheim and her historic collection.
History
In October 1942 she opened her museum/gallery, Art of This Century. Designed by the Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler, the gallery was composed of extraordinarily innovative exhibition rooms and soon became the most stimulating venue for contemporary art in New York City.
It was there that Peggy exhibited her collection of Cubist, abstract, and Surrealist art, which was at that time was nearly as complete as the collection that is currently housed in Venice.
In 1947 Peggy decided to return to Europe, where her collection was shown for the first time at the 1948 Venice Biennale, giving artists such as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko their first European exposure.
The presence of Cubist, abstract, and Surrealist art made the pavilion the most coherent survey of modernism to have been presented in Italy. In 1948 Peggy bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice, where she took up residence, eventually becoming an honorary citizen of Venice.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of Europe’s premier museums devoted to modern art. With masterpieces ranging in style from Cubism and Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, the collection has become one of the most respected and visited cultural attractions in Venice.
Peggy Guggenheim's career belongs in the history of 20th-century art. Peggy used to say that it was her duty to protect the art of her own time, and she dedicated half of her life to this mission, as well as to the creation of the museum that still carries her name.
Peggy Guggenheim was born in New York on August 26, 1898, the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim and Florette Seligman. Benjamin Guggenheim was one of seven brothers who, with their father, Meyer (of Swiss origin), created a family fortune in the late 19th century from the mining and smelting of metals, especially silver, copper, and lead. The Seligmans were a leading banking family.
In April 1912 her father died on the SS Titanic. Throughout her life, she directed her considerable inheritance toward the promotion and advancement of modernism artistic principles.
