Peggy Guggenheim Quotes & Sayings

[When asked how many husbands she had had:] My own, or other people's? — Peggy Guggenheim

I personally always hated Pop art. — Peggy Guggenheim

If anything can rival Venice in its beauty, it must be its reflection at sunset in the Grand Canal. — Peggy Guggenheim

My knowledge of art ended at impressionism. — Peggy Guggenheim

Peace was the one thing that Max (Ernst) needed in order to paint, and love was the one thing I needed in order to live. As neither of us gave the other what he most desired, our union was doomed to failure. — Peggy Guggenheim

[On amassing art for her collection:] My motto was 'Buy a picture a day' and I lived up to it. — Peggy Guggenheim

My mother's one idea was to sacrifice her life to her children and she had done nothing else since the death of my father. We wished that she had married again instead. — Peggy Guggenheim

I thought it would be nice to marry Virgil [Thomson] to have a musical background, but I never got far with the project. — Peggy Guggenheim

I was much more interested in literature than I was in art. I just got into art by mistake. — Peggy Guggenheim

It is always assumed that Venice is the ideal place for a honeymoon. This is a grave error. To live in Venice or even to visit it means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else. — Peggy Guggenheim

I wore one of my Tanguy earrings and one made by Calder in order to show my impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract Art. — Peggy Guggenheim

I look back on my life with great joy. I think it was a very successful life. I always did what I wanted and never cared what anyone thought. Women's lib? I was a liberated woman long before there was a name for it. — Peggy Guggenheim

Venice is not only a city of fantasy and freedom. It is also a city of joy and pleasure. — Peggy Guggenheim

To go out in a gondola at night is to reconstruct in one's imagination the true Venice, the Venice of the past alive with romance, elopements, abductions, revenged passions, intrigues, adulteries, denouncements, unaccountable deaths, gambling, lute playing and singing. — Peggy Guggenheim

I took advice from none but the best. I listened, how I listened! That's how I finally became my own expert. — Peggy Guggenheim

Having plenty of time and all the museum's funds at my disposal, I put myself on a regime to buy one picture a day. — Peggy Guggenheim

[On Venice:] Every hour of the day is a miracle of light. In summer with daybreak the rising sun produces such a tender magic on the water that it nearly breaks one's heart. — Peggy Guggenheim

When the nuns came to be blessed by the Patriarch, who on special holy days, went by my house in a motorboat, I detached the phallus of the horseman and hid it in a drawer. I also did this on certain days when I had to receive stuffy visitors, but occasionally I forgot, and when confronted with this phallus found myself in great embarrassment. The only thing to do in such cases was to ignore it. In Venice a legend spread that I had several phalluses of different sizes, like spare parts, which I used on different occasions. — Peggy Guggenheim

I don't collect anymore. Everything is so terribly expensive. I don't see anything I like anyhow. — Peggy Guggenheim