Publisher's Synopsis
Providing an account by her granddaughter of the life of the art collector Peggy Guggenheim, this biography traces her privileged upbringing and her friendships with avant-garde figures such as Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp. Published to mark the centenary of Guggenheim's birth, the book describes how, before World War II, she ran the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London, where she accumulated an outstanding collection of Surrealist and abstract art, and how in 1942 she escaped to New York with Max Ernst and opened the landmark Art of This Century gallery. There she exhibited her collection and works by emerging artists such as Jackson Pollock.;Guggenheim finally settled in Venice, in the 18th-century palazzo which, after her death, became the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Her guest-books, pages from which are published here, reveal a remarkable array of visitors, and drawings by Jean Arp, Marc Chagall and Alberto Giacometti, among others. The book also includes a summary by Thomas Messer of the courtship that ended with the donation of Guggenheim's collection - much of which is reproduced in colour, together with personal photographs - to the foundation.
