Palazzo Strozzi,
Florence 19 March–24 July 2016
Starting 19 March through 24 July 2016, Palazzo Strozzi hosts a major
exhibition bringing to Florence over one hundred works of European and American art from the
1920s to the 1960s, in a
narrative that reconstructs relationships
and ties across the Atlantic through the museums of two American collectors, Peggy Guggenheim and Solomon R. Guggenheim.
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, associate curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, the exhibition – a joint venture of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York – offers visitors an exceptional opportunity to view together parts of the collections of the museums of both Solomon and his niece Peggy through the work of some of the greatest figures in 20th century art.
Opening with masterpieces by such major artists as Kandinsky, Duchamp and Max Ernst, the exhibition goes on to explore postwar developments on both sides of the Atlantic, with the Art informel of such European masters as Alberto Burri, Emilio Vedova, Jean Dubuffet and Lucio Fontana, and with work by leading figures on the American art scene from the 1940s to the 1960s: Jackson Pollock, with no fewer than eighteen works, Mark Rothko with six, and Alexander Calder with five sculptures, the so-called ‘mobiles’, alongside work by Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly and others.
The opening of this exceptional exhibition in Florence evokes a tie that goes back many years. Palazzo Strozzi was the venue that Peggy Guggenheim (who had only recently arrived in Europe) chose in February 1949 to show the collection that was later to find a permanent home in Venice. The exhibition includes twenty-five of the same works of art that were displayed in that exhibition, the first to be held in Palazzo Strozzi's then newly-restored Strozzina cellars.
The paintings, sculptures, engravings and photographs from the Guggenheim Collections in New York and Venice, as well as from a small number of other museums and private collections, offer the visitor a unique opportunity to admire and compare some of the great masterpiece s which played a crucial role in defining the very concept of modern art, from Surrealism and Action Painting to Art informel and Pop Art.
The works of art on display include
Dominant Curve (Courbe dominante)
Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944),
April 1936. Oil on canvas, 129.2 x 194.3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 45.989.
Photo by Kristopher McKay
Vasily Kandinsky's monumental Dominant Curve (1936), which Peggy was to sell during the war (one of the "seven tragedies in her life as a collector");
The Kiss (Le Baiser)
Max Ernst (1891–1976), 1927, Oil on canvas, 129 x 161.2 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 76.2553.
Photo by David Heald © Max Ernst, by SIAE 2016.
Max Ernst 's The Kiss (1927), a manifesto of Surrealist Art and the painting used to advertise the Strozzina exhibition in 1949;
Study for Chimpanzee
Francis Bacon (1909–1992), March 1957. Oil and pastel on canvas, 152.4 x 117 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553
Photo by David Heald. © The Estate of Francis Bacon / All rights reserved / by SIAE 2016
Francis Bacon's Study for Chimpanzee (1957), rarely shown outside Venice, of which Peggy Guggenheim was so fond that she hung it in her bedroom;
Shining Back
Sam Francis (1923–1994), 1958, oil on canvas 202.6 x 135.4 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 59.1560
Photo by Kristopher McKay © 2016 Sam Francis Foundation, California, by SIAE 2016
works of American Abstract Expressionism such as Sam Francis's Shining Back(1958),
Gray Scramble
Frank Stella (b. 1936), 1968– 69. Oil on canvas, 175,3 x 175,3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection, bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012, 2012.101
Photo by David Heald. © Frank Stella, by SIAE 2016
of Color-Field and Post-Painterly Abstraction such as Frank Stella's Gray Scramble (1968–9),
Preparedness
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), 1968. Oil and Magna on three joined canvases, 304.8 x 548.6 cm overall. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 69.1885
Photo by Kristopher McKay. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein New York, by SIAE 2016
and of Pop Art, such as Roy Lichtenstein's grandiose Preparedness (1968), in which the artist turned his characteristic cartoon-like styleto protest the war in Vietnam.
ART FROM THE GUGGENHEIM COLLECTIONS
The exhibition testifies to the importance of the two collections and confirms the crucial role played by Peggy and Solomon Guggenheim in the history of 20th century art. On the one hand Solomon Robert Guggenheim (1861–1949), under the guiding hand of German painter the Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, who was to become the first director of the Guggenheim in New York, opened a Museum of Non-Objective Painting in 1939 based on the purist notion of abstraction as an absence of figures, and on Kandinsky's art in particular. Four years later he commissioned innovative and visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design the celebrated museum on Fifth Avenue that was to open in 1959.
On the other hand, Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) opted for more transversal collecting, open to a variety of movements of her time. Her engagement with contemporary art began when she was almost forty years of age. On the advice of historian and critic Herbert Read and of friends such as Marcel Duchamp, Howard Putzel and Nellie van Doesburg, she focused on European movements such as Cubism and Surrealism, in addition to the various avant- gardes of abstraction. Her collection was eventually to include works of American Abstract Expressionism by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, which she showed in New York in the course of the short but intense and fertile period during which she operated her Art of This Century Gallery (1942–47), prior to opening her museum in Venice in 1951.
When Solomon died in 1949, his New York museum was named for him and, under its new director James Johnson Sweeney, it expanded its collecting beyond abstraction and its sources, focusing in particular on post-war European and American work, thus becoming a truly comprehensive museum of modern and contemporary art.
Solomon's original collection was to grow over the years, acquiring other collections such as the legacy of Karl Nierendorf (1948), the Justin K. Thannhauser collection (1976), the collection of Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (1990–2), major donations from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation (1992) and the Bohen Foundation (2001), and, most recently (2012) eighty works of postwar American and European art, including several masterpieces, from the collection of Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof. A crucial moment in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s internationalisation was marked by Peggy Guggenheim's donation to the Foundation of her collection in Venice in 1976.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition occupies nine rooms. The first offers an introduction to the two great collectors in the Guggenheim family: Peggy with the Art of This Century Gallery, New York, and Solomon with the celebrated Frank Lloyd Wright museum.
The second room illuminates Peggy's career as a collector and her affinity to Surrealism.
The third room is devoted to Jackson Pollock and to his astonishingly original painting. Rooms four and five focus on the Abstract Expressionism of de Kooning and on pictorial trends that were coming to maturity in Europe in the same years.
A small adjacent room showcases four sculptures by Laurence Vail, Peggy’s first husband, in an evocative atmosphere reminiscent of a Wunderkammer.
The sixth room is devoted to Color Field Painting, to Post-Painterly Abstraction and to Calder's mobiles, some suspended from the ceiling. Room seven is given over to the work of Mark Rothko, whose potential Peggy recognized early.
The exhibition concludes with artistic research in Europe and in the United States in the 1960s, with Roy Lichtenstein's outsize Preparedness, painted in 1968, ideally closing the circle of the Guggenheim family's story as collectors of 20th century Modernism.
More Images from the Exhibition:
The Guggenheims and Their Collections
The Gentle Afternoon (Le Doux Après-midi)
Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), 1916. Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 58.3 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553.
Photo by David Heald © Giorgio de Chirico, by SIAE 2016
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, associate curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, the exhibition – a joint venture of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York – offers visitors an exceptional opportunity to view together parts of the collections of the museums of both Solomon and his niece Peggy through the work of some of the greatest figures in 20th century art.
Opening with masterpieces by such major artists as Kandinsky, Duchamp and Max Ernst, the exhibition goes on to explore postwar developments on both sides of the Atlantic, with the Art informel of such European masters as Alberto Burri, Emilio Vedova, Jean Dubuffet and Lucio Fontana, and with work by leading figures on the American art scene from the 1940s to the 1960s: Jackson Pollock, with no fewer than eighteen works, Mark Rothko with six, and Alexander Calder with five sculptures, the so-called ‘mobiles’, alongside work by Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly and others.
The opening of this exceptional exhibition in Florence evokes a tie that goes back many years. Palazzo Strozzi was the venue that Peggy Guggenheim (who had only recently arrived in Europe) chose in February 1949 to show the collection that was later to find a permanent home in Venice. The exhibition includes twenty-five of the same works of art that were displayed in that exhibition, the first to be held in Palazzo Strozzi's then newly-restored Strozzina cellars.
The paintings, sculptures, engravings and photographs from the Guggenheim Collections in New York and Venice, as well as from a small number of other museums and private collections, offer the visitor a unique opportunity to admire and compare some of the great masterpiece s which played a crucial role in defining the very concept of modern art, from Surrealism and Action Painting to Art informel and Pop Art.
The works of art on display include
Dominant Curve (Courbe dominante)
Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944),
April 1936. Oil on canvas, 129.2 x 194.3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 45.989.
Photo by Kristopher McKay
Vasily Kandinsky's monumental Dominant Curve (1936), which Peggy was to sell during the war (one of the "seven tragedies in her life as a collector");
The Kiss (Le Baiser)
Max Ernst (1891–1976), 1927, Oil on canvas, 129 x 161.2 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 76.2553.
Photo by David Heald © Max Ernst, by SIAE 2016.
Max Ernst 's The Kiss (1927), a manifesto of Surrealist Art and the painting used to advertise the Strozzina exhibition in 1949;
Study for Chimpanzee
Francis Bacon (1909–1992), March 1957. Oil and pastel on canvas, 152.4 x 117 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553
Photo by David Heald. © The Estate of Francis Bacon / All rights reserved / by SIAE 2016
Francis Bacon's Study for Chimpanzee (1957), rarely shown outside Venice, of which Peggy Guggenheim was so fond that she hung it in her bedroom;
Shining Back
Sam Francis (1923–1994), 1958, oil on canvas 202.6 x 135.4 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 59.1560
Photo by Kristopher McKay © 2016 Sam Francis Foundation, California, by SIAE 2016
works of American Abstract Expressionism such as Sam Francis's Shining Back(1958),
Gray Scramble
Frank Stella (b. 1936), 1968– 69. Oil on canvas, 175,3 x 175,3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection, bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012, 2012.101
Photo by David Heald. © Frank Stella, by SIAE 2016
of Color-Field and Post-Painterly Abstraction such as Frank Stella's Gray Scramble (1968–9),
Preparedness
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), 1968. Oil and Magna on three joined canvases, 304.8 x 548.6 cm overall. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 69.1885
Photo by Kristopher McKay. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein New York, by SIAE 2016
and of Pop Art, such as Roy Lichtenstein's grandiose Preparedness (1968), in which the artist turned his characteristic cartoon-like styleto protest the war in Vietnam.
ART FROM THE GUGGENHEIM COLLECTIONS
The exhibition testifies to the importance of the two collections and confirms the crucial role played by Peggy and Solomon Guggenheim in the history of 20th century art. On the one hand Solomon Robert Guggenheim (1861–1949), under the guiding hand of German painter the Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, who was to become the first director of the Guggenheim in New York, opened a Museum of Non-Objective Painting in 1939 based on the purist notion of abstraction as an absence of figures, and on Kandinsky's art in particular. Four years later he commissioned innovative and visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design the celebrated museum on Fifth Avenue that was to open in 1959.
On the other hand, Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) opted for more transversal collecting, open to a variety of movements of her time. Her engagement with contemporary art began when she was almost forty years of age. On the advice of historian and critic Herbert Read and of friends such as Marcel Duchamp, Howard Putzel and Nellie van Doesburg, she focused on European movements such as Cubism and Surrealism, in addition to the various avant- gardes of abstraction. Her collection was eventually to include works of American Abstract Expressionism by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, which she showed in New York in the course of the short but intense and fertile period during which she operated her Art of This Century Gallery (1942–47), prior to opening her museum in Venice in 1951.
When Solomon died in 1949, his New York museum was named for him and, under its new director James Johnson Sweeney, it expanded its collecting beyond abstraction and its sources, focusing in particular on post-war European and American work, thus becoming a truly comprehensive museum of modern and contemporary art.
Solomon's original collection was to grow over the years, acquiring other collections such as the legacy of Karl Nierendorf (1948), the Justin K. Thannhauser collection (1976), the collection of Giuseppe Panza di Biumo (1990–2), major donations from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation (1992) and the Bohen Foundation (2001), and, most recently (2012) eighty works of postwar American and European art, including several masterpieces, from the collection of Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof. A crucial moment in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s internationalisation was marked by Peggy Guggenheim's donation to the Foundation of her collection in Venice in 1976.
THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition occupies nine rooms. The first offers an introduction to the two great collectors in the Guggenheim family: Peggy with the Art of This Century Gallery, New York, and Solomon with the celebrated Frank Lloyd Wright museum.
The second room illuminates Peggy's career as a collector and her affinity to Surrealism.
The third room is devoted to Jackson Pollock and to his astonishingly original painting. Rooms four and five focus on the Abstract Expressionism of de Kooning and on pictorial trends that were coming to maturity in Europe in the same years.
A small adjacent room showcases four sculptures by Laurence Vail, Peggy’s first husband, in an evocative atmosphere reminiscent of a Wunderkammer.
The sixth room is devoted to Color Field Painting, to Post-Painterly Abstraction and to Calder's mobiles, some suspended from the ceiling. Room seven is given over to the work of Mark Rothko, whose potential Peggy recognized early.
The exhibition concludes with artistic research in Europe and in the United States in the 1960s, with Roy Lichtenstein's outsize Preparedness, painted in 1968, ideally closing the circle of the Guggenheim family's story as collectors of 20th century Modernism.
More Images from the Exhibition:
The Guggenheims and Their Collections
The Gentle Afternoon (Le Doux Après-midi)
Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), 1916. Oil on canvas, 65.3 x 58.3 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553.
Photo by David Heald © Giorgio de Chirico, by SIAE 2016
| Upward (Empor) Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944), October 1929. Oil on cardboard, 70 x 49 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by David Heald | ||
 Portrait of Frau P. in the South (Bildnis der Frau P. im Süden) Paul Klee (1879–1940), 1924. Watercolor and oil transfer drawing on paper, mounted on gouache-painted board, 42.5 x 31 cm including Mount, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by Carmelo Guadagno | ||
 | ||
| The Break of Day (L’Aurore) Paul Delvaux (1897–1994), July 1937, Oil on canvas, 120 x 150.5 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553. Photo by David Heald. © Paul Delvaux Fondation, St Idesbald, Belgique, by SIAE 2016 | ||
Europe–America. Surrealism and the Birth of the New Avant-Gardes Armour (L'Armure) André Masson (1896–1987), January–April 1925, oil on canvas, 80.6 x 54 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo David Heald © André Masson by SIAE 2016  | ||
| The Sun in Its Jewel Case (Le Soleil dans son écrin)Yves Tanguy (1900–1955), 1937, oil on canvas, 115,4 x 88,1 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by David Heald © Yves Tanguy, by SIAE 2016  | ||
| ''The Antipope” Max Ernst (1891–1976), ca. 1941, oil on cardboard, mounted on board, 32.5 x 26.5 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by Carmelo Guadagno © Max Ernst, by SIAE 2016  | ||
| Oink (They Shall Behold Thine Eyes) Leonora Carrington (1917-2011),1959, oil on canvas, cm 40 x 90,9, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 76.2553 Photo by David Heald © Leonora Carrington, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 The Parachutists William Baziotes (1912–1963), 1944, uco enamel on canvas 76.2 x 101.6 cm, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Gift, Ethel Baziotes 2004.89 Photo by David Heald  | ||
| Jamais Clyfford Still (1904–1980), May 1944, oil on canvas, 165.2 x 82 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by David Heald. © Clyfford Still, by SIAE 2016  | ||
| Untitled Arshile Gorky (1904–1948), summer 1944, oil on canvas, 167 x 178.2 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553. Photo by David Heald © Arshile Gorky by SIAE 2016 | ||
Jackson Pollock The Moon Woman Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), 1942, oil on canvas, 175.2 x 109.3 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by David Heald © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016  | ||
| Untitled Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), ca. 1946. Gouache and pastel on paper, 58 x 80 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by David Heald © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 The Water Bull (from the Accabonac Creek series) Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), 1946. Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 213 cm. Stadelijk Museum, Amsterdam A 2970. Gift of Peggy Guggenheim © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 Watery Paths Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), 1947. Oil on canvas, 114 x 86 cm. GNAM-Galleria di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, inv. 4554. Gift of Peggy Guggenheim, 1950 © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 Enchanted Forest Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), 1947, oil on canvas, 221.3 x 114.6 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553 Photo by David Heald. © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 Untitled (Green Silver) Jackson Pollock (Cody 1912 - East Hampton 1956), ca.1949. Enamel and aluminium paint on paper, mounted on canvas, cm 57,8 x 78,1. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift, Sylvia and Joseph Slifka, 2004.63 © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 Number 18 Jackson Pollock (Cody 1912 - East Hampton 1956), 1950, oil and enamel on Masonite, cm 56 x 56,7. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Gift, Janet C. Hauck, in loving memory of Alicia Guggenheim and Fred Hauck, 91.4046 © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society, ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | ||
Abstract Expressionism Composition Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), 1955, oil, enamel, and charcoal on canvas, 201 x 175.6. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 55.1419 Photo by Kristopher McKay | ||
 | ||
| The Gate Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), 1959–60, oil on canvas, 190.5 x 123.2 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 62.1620 Photo by David Heald © Hans Hofmann, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 Photo by David Heald ©The Willem de Kooning Foundation, by SIAE 2016 | ||
Postwar Europe Fleshy Face with Chestnut Hair (Châtaine aux hautes chairs) Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985), August 1951, oil-based mixed-media on Masonite, 64.9 x 54 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553. Photo by David Heald © Jean Dubuffet, by SIAE 2016 | ||
 Portrait of Soldier Lucien Geominne (Portrait du soldat Lucien Geominne) Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985), December 1950. Oil-based mixed-media on Masonite, 64.8 x 61.6 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection, bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012, 2012.49 Photo by David Heald. © Jean Dubuffet, by SIAE 2016  | ||
| Image of Time (Barrier) Emilio Vedova (Venezia 1919-2006), 1951. Egg tempera on canvas, cm 130,5 x 170,4. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553. Photo by Kristopher McKay. © Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova. | ||
 Photo by David Heald. |
Great American Painting Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110 Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), Easter Day, 1971. Acrylic with graphite and charcoal on canvas, 208.3 x 289.6 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Gift, Agnes Gund 84.3223 Photo by Kristopher McKay. © Dedalus Foundation, Inc. /Licensed by SIAE 2016 | |||
 © Helen Frankenthaler, by SIAE 2016  | |||
| Birth Kenneth
Noland (1924–2010), 1961. Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 91.4 cm. Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection,
bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012, 2012.90 Photo by David Heald. © Kenneth Noland, by SIAE 2016 | |||
Mark Rothko No.18 (Black. Orange on Maroon) Mark Rothko (1903–1970), 1963, oil on canvas, 175.6 x 163.5 cm. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Gift, The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., 86.3421 Photo by David Heald. © Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | |||
 Untitled (Red) Marc Rothko (1903–1970), 1968. Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 83.8 x 65.4 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection, bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012, 2012.92 Photo by David Heald © Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / ARS, New York, by SIAE 2016 | |||
