Peggy Guggenheim Collection and "Masterpieces from the Gianni Mattioli Collection" re-open
1998 - Peggy Guggenheim's centenary year. New paintings by Albers and Davis for Venice
Following a brief closure for building maintenance, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection re-opens to the public on February 4, 1998. In addition to Peggy Guggenheim’s collection of 20th century paintings and sculptures, ‘Masterpieces From The Gianni Mattioli Collection’ will also return to public view, in the barchessa’ of Palazzo Venier Dei Leoni. These twenty-six Italian paintings from 1910 to 1921 include several key works of Italian futurism (by Boccioni, Severini, Balla, Carrà, Depero, Russolo, Rosai and Soffici) as well as examples of ‘pittura metafisica’ by Carrà and Sironi, early paintings by Giorgio Morandi and a fauve-style portrait by Modigliani. These masterpieces are on long-term loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
YEAR OF HER CENTURY
1998 is the year in which the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation celebrates the centenary of Peggy Guggenheim’s birth as well as the 50th anniversary of the presence of the collection in Venice: in 1948, Peggy Guggenheim’s collection made its European debut at the Venice Biennale. Exhibitions highlighting Peggy Guggenheim’s remarkable life and achievements will be organized at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (June-September), and at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, venice (september - january 1999). Flowers will honor peggy guggenheim’s grave in the garden of Palazzo Venier Dei Leoni all year long, by courtesy of Fiorista Ossena Antica Bottega. Photographs of Peggy Guggenheim at home in Palazzo Venier Dei Leoni (by Cameraphoto, Venice) will be discretely placed in the exhibition galleries as a reminder of Peggy Guggenheim’s thirty year residence in La Serenissima.
The museum’s entrance tickets will commemorate Peggy Guggenheim with the phrase ‘Year of her century’, recalling the name she gave her legendary New York museum-gallery, ‘Art of this century’ (1942-47). A grand canal banner, placed on the façade of the museum, announces Peggy Guggenheim’s centenary year.
NEW ACQUISITIONS TO BE EXHIBITIED IN THE NEW WING
Since Peggy Guggenheim’s death in 1979, a small number of works has been donated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation with the intention that they should enrich the Venice museum. Some of these gifts will be exhibited from February the 7th 1998, together with post-war works from Peggy Guggenheim’s founding collection. Sculptures donated by Mario Merz and Luciano Minguzzi are permanently located in the Nasher Sculpture Garden of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
This will be the first occasion to view two paintings by the German-American painter and designer Josef Albers (1888-1976). In 1997, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation gave to the Guggenheim Foundation Variant “orange front” (1948-58) and Homage to the square riii a-1 (1970). They are the first paintings by this artist to enter a Venetian public collection. The homage to the square is one of albers’s famous series composed of squares within squares, of precisely calculated sizes and subtly varied hues within a narrow range of color, in this case red. Variant “orange front” is also a geometric study of juxtaposed colors, and of their tendency optically to expand or contract, recede or advance.
More recently Earl Davis, son and heir of the american artist Stuart Davis (1894-1964), has donated a color sketch for one of Stuart Davis’s murals, Allée, executed in 1955 for Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, Usa. In 1997, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection curated the first european museum retrospective of this distinguished pioneer of the american avant-garde. With the gift of this mural study, the SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION, Venice, becomes only the second european museum to own a work by Stuart Davis.
Cumulatively these and previous donations have the effect of strengthening the museum’s capacity to represent post-war western art. Some paintings are by artists who were already represented in Peggy Guggenheim’s own collection—Pierre Alechinsky, Edmondo Bacci, Luciano Minguzzi and Armando Pizzinato. Other gifts specifically enrich the presence of post-war italian art in the museum: Fabrizio Clerici, Lucio Fontana, Mario Merz and Gastone Novelli. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation wishes to thank those who have generously made these gifts: The Josef And Anni Albers Foundation, Giorgio & Denise Bacci, Enrico & Fiorella Chiari, Fabrizio Clerici, Earl Davis, Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Luciano Minguzzi, Mario Merz, and Ivan Novelli.
The exhibitions of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection are made possible by the support of the Regione Veneto and Intrapresæ Collezione Guggenheim.