Peggy Guggenheim Collection – Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

The celebrated art collection assembled by Peggy Guggenheim and displayed in Palazzo Venier dei Leoni includes a group of extra-European artifacts, among which are six fine Indigenous American objects of Mesoamerican, Andean, and Amazonian origin. Peggy Guggenheim purchased these pieces in 1959 in New York, and they reflect her partial adherence to the fascination for the so-called “primitive art”, then widespread among collectors and contemporary artists. Among these, a particularly important role was played by Max Ernst, with whom Peggy Guggenheim had, in the early 1940s, a brief but significant romantic relationship, which probably marked the beginning of her interest in “primitive” art. It is noteworthy that several of the American objects appear in historical photographs of Peggy Guggenheim’s home, bearing witness to the changing ways in which they were displayed within the refined and elegant domestic setting.