Peggy Guggenheim, a millionaire heiress with a family name with a collecting tradition, is considered the bridge between the European and North American avant-garde of the 20th century. The special story of the dealer, who lived on both sides of the Atlantic, arouses new interest thanks to the documentary Addicted to artan exhibition at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid and a reissue in October of his memoirs. These are all initiatives that promote the visibility she gave to female artists in 1943 with the exclusive exhibition of female creators, 31 womenwhich is now recreated in Spain. It had never been seen in New York, but it also condemned many participants to a specific category, in addition to later rejecting the abstract expressionists.
“The relaunch of this book, in conjunction with the Mapfre Foundation exhibition, restores the importance of a key figure in the art of the last century and a pioneering voice at a time when women’s voices are gaining importance literary”, declares Teresa Gras. , editor of the new edition of Confessions of an art lover (Lumen). Thanks to this exhibition of women organized at the Guggenheim gallery, The art of this centurymany works by previously unknown artists are preserved thanks to the project undertaken by inspired collector Gina Segal. However, on the posters for the Madrid exhibition, it is noted that it is “difficult to definitively attribute a feminist approach to the Guggenheim”.
“We must be careful in projecting a contemporary vision of figures from the past. While supporting initiatives like this, Guggenheim also had a contradictory attitude towards women artists; He did not support the representatives of abstract expressionism at all,” explains the curator of the Mapfre exhibition, Patricia Mayayo. A negative that weighs more if we consider that The art of this century This was the birthplace of the movement, mainly of Jackson Pollock. But Mayayo assures that the gallery owner has declared “very clearly” her interest in highlighting the work of women and breaking the myth of the muse.
Authors according to men’s criteria
The women’s exhibition in New York was the idea of Marcel Duchamp, Guggeheim’s mentor in modern art and a close friend of his. The list of participants was drawn up by Alfred Barr, founder of MoMA, while the submitted pieces were evaluated by a committee composed, with the exception of Peggy herself, entirely of men: the artists Max Ernst, Duchamp and André Breton, and critics. artists James Johnson Sweeney, James Soby, Howard Putzel and Jimmy Ernst. Virtually the same team made up the jury for a summer salon held in 1941 at the gallery, and they repeated as curators of a second exhibition of women in The art of this century in 1945, titled Women.
For art historian Griselda Pollock, a pioneer of feminist studies, the Guggenheim’s invitation to participate in its exclusive exhibition left many authors between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if they did not accept, they would be excluded from artistic socialization circles, and if they did, they would carry the label of “woman artist”. “And they were much more than that. They were the founders of the abstract movement, students of Hans Hofmann, co-creators of modern art who worked in the same studios as their male colleagues. The only one who refused to be part of it was Georgia O’Keeffe, because she was already very famous; the others had to take the risk.
Pollock remembers the tragic story of one of the authors who was part of 31 womenthe Swiss Sonja Sekula. “She was a brilliant abstract painter, but she was ill and her parents couldn’t pay for her health care in the United States, so she had to return to Switzerland. He was never able to secure another exposure, and at the age of 45 he committed suicide. The price to pay was therefore real,” explains the author of the book. former teachers.
Protector of Exiles
Curator Mayayo defends that the women’s collective exhibitions were not an isolated initiative. Guggenheim has organized solo exhibitions of artists like Irene Rice Pereira and her daughter Pegeen Vail Guggenheim. “Another very important work that she did was to serve as a link between women artists of the day; He helped many of them financially and they attended the meetings he organized in New York. However, in her memoirs, the patron only mentions regular monetary assistance during her stay in New York to Bretón and Pollock. But his support for artists, men and women, who fled Europe and the Nazis remains true. This is the aspect for which Peggy also passed on to posterity: giving refuge to the exiled artists whom she called her “children of war”.
The rise of Hitler and the outbreak of World War II surprised Guggenheim while he was living in Europe. The gallery opened in London in 1938, Guggenheim Youthhad to close, but that did not prevent it from continuing to acquire works. Additionally, while the Germans were marching on Paris, she bought “a painting a day,” as she notes in her book: “In Paris, everyone knew that I bought works of art and, I suppose, because of the war, they were more eager than ever to sell paintings. They pursued me in a merciless manner. My phone was ringing all the time and people were bringing me paintings to bed before I got up in the morning.
In another passage, she remembers that on the day Hitler entered Norway, she bought a painting for $1,000 from the cubist Léger: “She never understood how he could buy paintings on a day like that. » At this time, he also purchased pieces by Leonora Carrington and the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. In any case, he could not resist the advance of the Third Reich and had to return to New York with his collection in 1941, only to return seven years later to the old continent, to Venice, where he remained until his death. Guggenheim always felt more comfortable in Europe than in the United States, and he expresses this frankly in his memoirs. In fact, it is the tone that sets the entire text.
Private image of the artists
Confessions of an art lover was originally published in two parts: the first in 1946, under the title Out of this century (Out of this century), and the second in 1960, with the current title. Critical reception has been mixed due to the frankness of its pages. “He has been criticized for not focusing on the art itself, on many occasions favoring anecdotes about the artists rather than their work and the various relationships that the author had with them,” comments the publisher of this edition, Bold. So much so that in early releases pseudonyms were used to mention artists, a feature that changed with a 1979 release that brought both parties together.
Guggenheim describes Pollock as “quite difficult, he drank too much and when he did he was unpleasant, not to say evil”; a humble Yves Tanguy, but who, when he began to make himself known, “rolled one-pound notes into balls and threw them on the nearest tables. Sometimes he went so far as to burn them”; or a Kandinsky “a wonderful, very practical old man who looked like a Wall Street stockbroker”. But above all there are the disagreements of the surrealist movement, this group where big egos collide and where Bretón decides who enters and who does not. “The person who most opposed Breton was Dalí, because of his vulgar and commercial attitude towards advertising,” the book reads.
We also appreciate, after having been written over several years, an evolution in the personality and character of Peggy Guggenheim. From the insecurities she carried as a child from her homeschooling to the age of 15, a botched nose job, or the “burden” of being 23 and a virgin, fully aware of her power of influence, with a network. which extended across Western Europe to the United States. But above all, a maturity shines through in his vision of art. She begins by opening her first gallery because “she is bored in the English countryside” and ends up admitting that “her duty is to protect the art of her time”.
