Confessions of an Art Addict (12 page)

In the summer of 1945 my great friend Emily Coleman came to see me, and brought with her a fantastic creature called Marius Bewley. I have never met anyone like him in my life. He looked like a priest, which he had once intended to be, and spoke with a strange false English accent. I took to him at once, and immediately asked him
to come and be my secretary in the gallery. He accepted just as readily, as he thought the idea very pleasant. Our collaboration was a great success. We became tremendous friends and have remained so ever since, though Marius left me after a year to go to take a ph.
D
. at Columbia University. He was extremely learned and a brilliant writer, and everything he said was brilliant too. He had a marvellous sense of life and of humour. He loved modern pictures, and though he sold very few, he bought a lot from my gallery.

After Marius left me, he sent in his place a very strange young man who couldn't type and who never appeared on time—in fact, some days not at all. I was kept very busy answering the telephone for him, as his friends never stopped phoning him. The only thing he liked to do was to take my Lhasa terriers for walks, as they served as introductions to other fascinating Lhasa terriers who belonged to such distinguished people as Lily Pons, John Carradine and Philip Barry and others. The original Lhasa had been given to Max Ernst, but when we were divorced he had taken it away with him. I had wanted very much to retain this darling dog, Kachina, for half the year, and wished to have this put in the divorce contract, but it was too complicated and I had to content myself, years later, with two of her puppies, which Max sold me at birth.

The two Sir Herberts and Raoul

With Bacci and Tancredi in my garden

In my barchessa

Much as I loved Art of this Century, I loved Europe more than America, and when the war ended I couldn't wait to go back. Also, I was exhausted by all my work in the gallery, where I had become a sort of slave. I had even given up going out to lunch. If I ever left for an hour to go to a dentist, oculist or hairdresser, some very important museum director would be sure to come in and say, ‘Miss Guggenheim is never here'. It was not only necessary for me to sell Pollocks and other pictures from current shows, but I also had to get the paintings circulated in travelling exhibitions. The last year was the worst, when my secretary couldn't even type, and this extra burden was added to my chores. I had become a sort of prisoner and could no longer stand the strain. Levi Straus, the French cultural attaché, gave me a letter to the French Consul, saying I had to go abroad to see French and European art, and with this excuse I got to Paris and then to Venice, where Mary McCarthy and her husband, Boden Broadwater, insisted that I accompany them.

On my way there, I decided Venice would be my future home. I had always loved it more than any place on earth and felt I would be happy alone there. I set about trying to find a palace that would house my collection and provide a garden for my dogs. This was to take several years; in the meantime I had to go back to New York to close the gallery. We ended it with a retrospective show of van Doesburg, which I arranged to have circulated all over the United States. Nellie van Doesburg came to New York from France as my guest, with all the pictures. I had been trying to arrange this during the war, but had not succeeded until it was too late for her to leave France.

I sold all Kiesler's fantastic furniture and inventions. There was terrific bidding for them, and to avoid complications I let them be removed by the cash and carry system. Poor Kiesler never even got one thing as a souvenir, they disappeared so quickly.

Betty Parsons fell heir to my work, spiritually, and as I said, promised Pollock a show. Happy to think that she was there to help the unknown artists, I left my collection in storage and flew to Europe with my two dogs, not to return for twelve years.

One of the first people I had met in Venice in 1946 was an artist called Vedova. I was in the Café Angelo at the Rialto. Not knowing anyone in Venice, I inquired of the
patron
where I might meet some modern artists. He said, ‘Go to the other Angelo restaurant at San Marco and ask for Vedova.' I wrote this name on a matchbox and proceeded to the other Angelo. Here I received a wonderful welcome from Vedova and another Venetian artist, Santomaso, who both became my friends. They were very much interested in modern art, and knew about my uncle's collection, which surprised me. In fact, they even had the catalogue. As they spoke Venetian dialect together, I spent painful hours in their company, not understanding a word they said. But when I was alone with either of them it was better, as I could speak a little Italian.

Vedova, who painted abstractions, was an enormously tall man with a beard. He was a Communist and during the war had been a partisan. He was very young and mad about lovely young girls. Santomaso was less tall and rounder. He also had a roving eye, and a wife and child as well. He was extremely well versed in Venetian history and recounted the most fascinating things of his great city's past. Of the two, he was the more cultivated. The Angelo restaurant was filled with their paintings and a great many other people's. This is a Venetian custom: painters are allowed to eat free and give their works in return.

It was through Santomaso that I was invited to show my entire collection at the xxivth Biennale of Venice. He had suggested to Rudolfo Pallucchini, the secretary-general of the Biennale, that the collection should be exhibited, and it was agreed that it should be shown in the Greek pavilion, which was free because of the Greeks being at war.

The Biennale, which was started in 1895, is an international exhibition of contemporary art, which is held every other year in the Public Gardens at the end of Venice, on the lagoon near the Lido. A lot of very ugly buildings put up in the time of Mussolini give it a distinct character. The trees and the gardens are wonderfully looked after and make a beautiful background for the various pavilions. In the middle of June, when the Biennale opens, the lime trees are flowering and the perfume they exhale is overpowering. I often feel this must compete strongly with the exhibition, as it is so much pleasanter to sit in the gardens than to go into the terribly hot and unventilated pavilions.

The foreign countries that exhibit are each responsible for the shows in their own pavilions, which are run under the auspices of their various governments. In the main Italian pavilion there are miles and miles of very boring paintings, though occasionally something good is shown. There are also innumerable large and small one-man shows which are supposed to be devoted to contemporary painters, though sometimes earlier artists, such as
Delacroix, Courbet, Constable, Turner, and even Goya have slipped in. No one knows why. Most of the Italians who exhibit go on doing so year after year out of habit. There have also been one-man shows of Picasso, Braque, Miró, Ernst, Arp, Giacometti, Marini, Klee, Mondrian, Douanier Rousseau, as well as shows of the Fauves and the Futurists. Before 1948, only Picasso and Klee were known in Italy, apart from the Italian Futurists.

The Biennale is opened by the President of Italy, who comes in full pomp and regalia to inaugurate it, and the Venetian state boats of the past are brought out for the procession from the Prefettura, the Prefect's palace, to the Public Gardens.

In 1948, after so many years of disuse, the pavilions were in a bad state and there was an awful lot of repairing going on up to the last minute. My pavilion was being done over by Scarpa, who was the most modern architect in Venice. Pallucchini, the secretary-general, was not at all conversant with modern art. He was a great student of the Italian renaissance, and it must have been very difficult for him, as well as very brave, to do his task. When he gave a lecture in my pavilion he asked me to help him distinguish the various schools; he was even unfamiliar with the painters. Unfortunately I had to go to the dentist, but he claimed that he had managed without me.

Pallucchini was very strict and tyrannical. He reminded me of an Episcopalian minister. He would not allow me
into the Gardens until my pavilion was finished. I was very upset, as everyone else in Venice who was interested in modern art seemed to be getting passes. Finally I was invited to come, and was taken all over by Pallucchini's aide-de-camp, a lovely man called Umbro Apollonio. I don't know how, but while talking to him I sensed that this was the first time in his life that he was doing a job that he enjoyed, and my recognition of the fact touched him so much that we immediately became friends. Like Pallucchini, he knew nothing about modern art. In Italy, the Surrealists, Brancusi, Arp, Giacometti, Pevsner and Malevich had never been heard of. If Santomaso was conversant with what was going on outside Italy, it was only because he had been to Paris in 1945. Also, he and Vedova had both seen copies of
Minotaur
and
Cahiers d'Art
, brought clandestinely into Italy.

In 1948 the foreign pavilions were, naturally,
à la page.
But some were still very much behind the Iron Curtain. I was allowed to hang my collection three days before the Biennale opened. Actually, I wanted to go to Ravenna with Dr Sandberg, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, who had already finished his work in the Dutch pavilion. But this was out of the question, so I buckled down to work. Fortunately I was given a free hand and a lot of efficient workmen, who did not mind my perpetual changes. We managed to get the show finished in time, and though it was terribly crowded it looked gay and attractive, all on white walls—so different
to Kiesler's décor for Art of This Century.

The opening of the Biennale was very formal, but, as usual, I had no hat, stockings or gloves and was in quite a dilemma. I borrowed stockings and a girdle from a friend, and instead of a hat wore enormous marguerite-flowered ear-rings made out of Venetian glass beads. Count Zorzi, the head of the press office and the Ambassador of the Biennale, who had actually extended to me the Biennale invitation, gave me strict instructions that when President Einaudi came to my pavilion I should try to explain to him as much as I could about modern art in the five minutes he would remain with me. I received exactly contrary orders from Pallucchini, who said the President was lame and would be terribly tired after visiting the whole Biennale, my pavilion being his last effort.

When His Excellency arrived he greeted me by saying, ‘Where is your collection?' I said, ‘Here,' and he corrected himself and asked where it had been before. I tried to obey Count Zorzi rather than Pallucchini, and put in a few words, but luckily the photographers intervened and the entire official party was photographed with Gonella, the Minister of Education, the President and me under my lovely Calder mobile.

The same morning I had a visit from the American Ambassador and the consular staff. The United States pavilion was not open, as the pictures had not arrived in time, and James Dunn, our Ambassador, was very pleased that at least I represented the United States. Looking at
one of my abstract Picassos, he seemed rather happy to note that it was ‘almost normal'.