In spring 2026, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents the first and most comprehensive museum exhibition devoted to Peggy Guggenheim’s London experience and to her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, active between 1938 and 1939. In just eighteen months, from January 1938 to June 1939, Guggenheim Jeune became a key point of reference for the European avant-gardes, distinguishing itself through the promotion of local and international artists associated with abstraction and Surrealism. Set against a backdrop of extraordinary creative vitality and mounting historical tensions, the gallery anticipated developments that would profoundly shape twentieth-century art.
The exhibition sheds light on a decisive phase in Peggy Guggenheim’s formation as a collector and patron, tracing the network of relationships and influences that guided her vision, from Marcel Duchamp and Mary Reynolds to Samuel Beckett. Guggenheim Jeune hosted more than twenty exhibitions, including Vasily Kandinsky’s first solo show in London, a monographic exhibition devoted to Jean Cocteau, the first UK group exhibition dedicated to collage, and a controversial show of contemporary sculpture.
The exhibition brings together key works shown in those pioneering presentations, alongside related works from the same period by artists such as Eileen Agar, Salvador DalÃ, Barbara Hepworth, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Henry Moore, Piet Mondrian, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and others. Archival materials further evoke a climate of intense experimentation on the eve of the Second World War. After Venice, the exhibition will travel to the Royal Academy of Arts in London in autumn 2026 and to the Guggenheim Museum in New York in spring 2027.
