Peggy Guggenheim & Frederick Kiesler: The Story Of Art Of This Century

In the 1940s New York was the crucible for post-war American and European art, and at the heart of this was Peggy Guggenheim and her remarkable museum/gallery, made instantly the most sensational venue of the avant garde in New York by Frederick Kiesler's visionary architectural design. This is the never-before-written story of Art of This Century--the name Guggenheim gave to both her collection (now part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and on permanent view in Venice, Italy) and to her 57th Street gallery, Kiesler's masterpiece, within which the careers of artists such as William Baziotes, David Hare, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Charles Seliger and Clyfford Still were launched. The essays in this volume recount the formation of Guggenheim's collection and reconstruct for the first time the plan and design of Art of This Century, analyzing its place in Kiesler's long career in architecture, theatre design, sculpture, and theories of perception. They also assemble reactions by the press; set the record straight with new evidence about Pollock's largest-ever painting, Mural (1943); and document the 55 exhibitions that Guggenheim organized at Art of This Century from 1942 to 1947. The 398-page publication is comprehensively illustrated and includes color plates of a selection of the collection, Kiesler's drawings and designs, and numerous installation photographs.
Peggy Guggenheim was born Marguerite Guggenheim on August 26, 1898 in New York City. This American art collector was an important patron of the Abstract Expressionist school of artists in New York City. Her father was Benjamin Guggenheim, a son of the wealthy mining magnate Meyer Guggenheim, and one of her uncles was Solomon R. Guggenheim, who founded the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She died in 1979, near Venice, Italy.