Peggy Guggenheim

Peggy Guggenheim

Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was a famous socialite and art collector. Over the weekend, on March 6th, I got the opportunity to watch a documentary on her life from the point of view of her closest friends and family. 
Peggy was born August 26, 1898 and died December 23, 1979, so she isn't technology a contemporary person but without the modernist and bold moves Peggy made during this modern period who knows what contemporary art would look like now. 
Her father was Benjamen Guggenheim and her mother was Florette Seligman both of whom were wealthy families in 1920's America. 
However, Peggy speaks of how she always felt different and out of place in high society and was considered to be the black sheep of her family when she chose to move to Paris to join the arts. She was drawn to the idea of the modern artists and how different their ideas and art was. It allowed her a place to be herself.
After moving to Paris and joining the bohemian lifestyle Peggy begins to express a desire to lose her virginity so she marries Laurence Vail, a Dada sculptor, with whom she had two kids and was soon divorced in 1928. So began her vicious affair with the writer John Ferrar Holms, that ended with his death. All of the time she remained close friends with Marcel Duchamp.

John Ferrar Holms

All the while she is living in Paris, she is seeing all of the amazing art being made and decides to open a gallery with her inheritance. Her gallery becomes very famous with popular Modern shows. Some of the artists she featured were Wassily Kandinsky, Yves Tanguy, and Wolfgang Paalen. 
By the late 30's she had realized, with a little encouragement from her uncle Solomon Guggenheim, that what she really wanted was to open a museum. 
The most amazing part of her life for me, was the part when they were discussing how Peggy began to viciously collect artwork from the modern artists during the time of Hitler's invasions. She bought as many paintings as possible and because the artists were trying to sell them so that they weren't destroyed during World War II. In the film they also discussed how she with the help of her Duchamp several artists escape from Europe. 

interview with Jean Cocteau

Peggy really was an amazingly misunderstood woman, but she did extraordinary things. After leaving Europe she opened another museum in New York which is the Guggenheim that we know today.