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WORLD'S BEST ART
For a list of the finest works of
painting and sculpture, by the
world's most famous artists, see:
Greatest Paintings Ever
Oils, watercolours, mixed media
from 1300-present.
Greatest Sculptures Ever
Works in stone, bronze, wood
from 33,000 BCE-present.
VISUAL ARTS OF ISLAM
For a list of the world's greatest
libraries and museum collections
of Muslim culture, see:
Museums of Islamic Art.
WORLDS TOP ARTISTS
For top creative practitioners, see:
Best Artists of All Time.
For the greatest view painters, see:
Best Landcape Artists.
For the greatest still life art, see:
Best Still Life Painters.
For the greatest portraitists
see: Best Portrait Artists.
For the greatest genre-painting, see:
Best Genre Painters.
For the top allegorical painting,
see: Best History Painters.
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Meantime, she continued collecting, purchasing
masterpieces by Piet Mondrian
(1872-1944), Francis Picabia (1879-1953), Georges
Braque (1882-1963) and Salvador
Dali (1904-89). She staggered Fernand
Leger (1881-1955) by buying his Men in the City on the same
day that Hitler invaded Norway. She also bought Bird in Space by
Constantin Brancusi
(1876-1957) as the Germans were approaching Paris in May 1940, and only
afterwards left for New York.
The following year Peggy Guggenheim launched
her museum of modern art in New York. Designed by the Romanian-Austrian
architect Frederick Kiesler, Art of This Century consisted of a
number of innovative exhibition spaces and rapidly became known as the
most avant-garde venue for contemporary
art in the City. It was here that she presented her collection of
Cubist, Surrealist and non-objective artworks, as well as a series of
exhibitions showcasing the talents of the emerging New York. The latter
included both established artists from Europe along with a number of unknown
young Americans like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes,
Clyfford Still and
Mark Rothko.
Her support for Pollock was particularly
valuable. She gave him his first show in 1943, provided him with a monthly
income and sold a number of his works. Plus, she bought a number of his
ground-breaking works for her own private collection. In her espousal
of Pollock's style of "action-painting" and Rothko's and Still's
Colour Field painting, Guggenheim played mid-wife to the new American
movement of Abstract
Expressionism.
In 1947 she returned to Europe to exhibit
her collection at the 1948 Venice Biennale. It was the first showing on
the Continent of the work of American artists such as Arshile Gorky (born
Vosdanig Manoog Adoian) (1905-48), Pollock and Rothko. A year later, she
bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, by the Grand Canal in Venice,
where she established herself and her collection (open to the public from
1951) for the rest of her life.
In 1969 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
invited her to display her collection in New York. The show's success
as well as the close relationship fostered by the Foundation between itself
and Peggy, led to the latter's decision to bequeath her Venetian mansion
and artworks to the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, on condition that
the collection remain in Venice. The donation perfectly complemented the
main Guggenheim collection by plugging important gaps, not least with
her masterpieces of Surrealism and large-scale canvases by Jackson Pollock.
The museum was opened in 1980.
Permanent Collection
The Peggy Guggenheim Museum is the most
significant Italian showcase of European and American art of the first
half of the 20th century. Housed in Peggy Guggenheim's former home, Palazzo
Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice, its collection consists
of Peggy's personal holdings, augmented by masterpieces from the Nasher
Sculpture Garden and the Gianni Mattioli Collection.
Peggy's personal collection of paintings
and sculpture features major exemplars from nearly all the major movements
of modern art, including Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, Metaphysical
painting, Neo-Plasticism, Conceptual art,
and American Abstract Expressionism. It holds important works by the Surrealist
artists Max Ernst (1891-1976), Rene
Magritte (1898-1967), Joan Miró (1893-1983), and Yves Tanguy
(1900-55), a large series of works by Jackson Pollock, and paintings by
many of the most famous artists of
the modernist era.
Highlights
These include: The Poet, and On
the Beach, by Picasso
(1881-1973); The Clarinet by Georges Braque; Sad Young Man on
a Train by Marcel Duchamp; Maiastra by Fernand Léger;
Bird in Space by Constantin Brancusi; Very Rare Picture on Earth
by Francis Picabia (1879-1953); The Red Tower, and The Nostalgia
of the Poet, by Giorgio
de Chirico (1888-1978); Composition No. 1 with Grey and Red
(1938), and Compositon with Red (1939) by Piet Mondrian; Landscape
with Red Spots by Vasili Kandinsky; Seated Woman II by Joan
Miró; Woman with Her Throat Cut, and Woman Walking,
by Giacometti (1901-66), Magic Garden by Paul
Klee (1879-1940); The Kiss and Attirement of the Bride
by Max Ernst, Empire of Light by Renee Magritte; Birth of Liquid
Desires by Salvador Dali; The Moon Woman, and Alchemy
by Jackson Pollock.
Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Sculpture
Garden
This Sculpture Garden presents 3-D works
both from the permanent collection (for example by Jean Arp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon,
Max Ernst, Barry Flanagan, Alberto Giacometti, Andy Goldsworthy, Jenny
Holzer, Marino Marini, and Henry
Moore), as well as works on loan from foundations and private collections.
Gianni Mattioli Collection
The museum also displays twenty six masterpieces
on long-term loan from the Gianni Mattioli Collection of modern art, including
a rare portrait by Amedeo Modigliani.
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is owned
and run by the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, which also owns the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, and the
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
The Guggenheim Museum Venice
704 Dorsoduro
I-30123 Venezia
Telephone: +39.041.2405411
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