Peggy Guggenheim's London Gallery Explored in Ordovas Exhibition

Before becoming the legendary collector and patron of the arts in Venice, Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) ran a London gallery for 18 months. The exhibition 'Peggy Guggenheim and London' at Ordovas gallery (25 Savile Row) runs until 14 December 2019 and tells this chapter through artworks and archival materials. Guggenheim founded Guggenheim Jeune in January 1938 at Cork Street, in a former pawnshop, to introduce European avant-garde artists to 1930s London. The gallery closed in June 1939, but it was a formative phase. A highlight was Yves Tanguy's first solo show in London (6–16 July 1938), featuring 25 paintings and five gouaches, which The Times described as 'lunar landscape populated by bone and mechanical forms'. The exhibition also includes works by Hans Arp, among the first artists in Guggenheim's collection. After closing the gallery, she planned a modern art museum in London with critic Herbert Read, dubbed M.M.M.M. (my much misunderstood Museum). The outbreak of World War II in September 1939, while she was in Paris buying works for the museum, derailed the plan. That collection debuted in 1942 at her New York gallery Art of This Century and eventually reached Venice in 1949.