Modern art on the Grand Canal
On the Grand Canal, in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, an unfinished eighteenth century palace of which only the ground floor was built, the American collector Peggy Guggenheim lived for thirty years, from 1949 until her death in 1979. Niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, she had gathered one of the most important collections of twentieth century art in Europe, and she left it to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation together with her house, which opened as a museum.
The collection covers the great avant-gardes of the first half of the century: Cubism with Picasso and Braque; Futurism with Boccioni and Balla; abstract art with Kandinsky and Mondrian; Surrealism with Max Ernst, her husband for a while, Magritte, Dalí and De Chirico; and American Abstract Expressionism, with Jackson Pollock, whom Peggy discovered and supported in New York. The garden, with sculptures by Giacometti, Moore and others, holds the tomb of Peggy and her beloved dogs. On the terrace facing the canal, Marino Marini's equestrian statue "The Angel of the City" welcomes visitors arriving by water.
Tip: the museum is closed on Tuesdays; nearby, the Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi host contemporary art exhibitions.
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