The Peggy Guggenheim Collection pays tribute to the great collector and patron’s first gallery, a dazzling and sensational project that brought 30 Cork Street, London, to life in 1938–39. The exhibition – in Venice until the autumn before moving to the English capital – brings together around a hundred works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and photographs, as well as numerous archival materials. Peggy Guggenheim in London. The Making of a Collector is a tribute to the love Peggy felt for England, so strong that a few years before her death she declared: “I have been in love with Venice for fifty years. If I didn’t live here, I would live in the English countryside”.
Below is an extract from the essay by the curators – Gražina Subelytė and Simon Grant – in the exhibition catalogue (Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector, Marsilio Arte, Venice 2026).
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Though short-lived, the gallery played a pivotal role in shaping the artistic landscape of pre-war Britain by increasing the visibility and acceptance of contemporary art. At a time when London’s institutions remained conservative in their approach to new art, Guggenheim Jeune emerged as a radical alternative. Alongside galleries like the Redfern Gallery, the
Mayor Gallery, and the London Gallery, it helped shift the cultural conversation, providing an essential platform for avant-garde art and challenging established norms. This period was important in shaping Guggenheim’s identity as a patron of the arts – marked by her intention to establish a modern art museum in London, a vision that would ultimately be realised in Venice. Around this time she also made the first acquisition for what would become her celebrated collection – the sculpture Tête et coquille, 1933, by Jean (Hans) Arp – signalling the beginning of her lifelong activity as a collector.
Encouraged by her friend, the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, who urged her to champion contemporary art as “a living thing,” Guggenheim deepened her commitment to supporting the avant-garde. Over the course of eighteen months, from January 1938 to June 1939, Guggenheim Jeune quickly became one of the central places to see the latest developments in art by both local and international artists, many of whom were affiliated with abstraction and Surrealism. [...]
The gallery thrived amid the collaborative, and at times competitive, network of fellow gallerists working in the locale. The London Bulletin, edited by E.L.T. Mesens, supported it in print. Although Guggenheim Jeune did not achieve commercial success, its achievements lay in its bold curatorial vision and its role in fostering avant-garde experimentation. Guggenheim candidly described the challenges of sustaining such a venture in a letter to her friend, the writer Emily Coleman: “Gallery goes on more and more dully. The London public is apathetic to modern art.”
The Guggenheim Jeune programme reflected the healthy cross-pollination of ideas that circulated among artists and gallerists and existed during a time of feverish social and political turmoil. These world events, brought to a head by the start of World War II, inexorably affected many of the artists involved. The gallery became a haven for radical artistic expression during a period of mounting political anxiety. Its support of émigré and Jewish artists – including victims of Nazi persecution, such as Otto Freundlich – stood as a quiet form of resistance to Fascism.
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Before Art of This Century in New York and the Venetian house-museum, Peggy Guggenheim had dreamt of opening a museum of modern and contemporary art right here in London, but the world war that threw the world into turmoil also disrupted her plans. Despite everything, however, the revolutionary spark that had animated Guggenheim Jeune’s months in London guided the collector throughout her life, leading her to champion and encourage modern art and enabling her to create an art collection that continues to amaze audiences of every generation.
We therefore invite you to visit Peggy Guggenheim in London. The Making of a Collector, at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni until 19 October.
Exhibition views: © Peggy Guggenheim Collection, ph. Matteo De Fina. All images: courtesy Peggy Guggenheim Collection