Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum description and photos - USA: New York (Topic)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum description and photos - USA: New York. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Photo & Description

The Solomon Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue is one of the largest and most famous collections of contemporary art in the world. Its history is a vivid example of the possibilities of private initiative, inspired by the love of art.

The museum was founded by a very wealthy businessman, collector and philanthropist Solomon Guggenheim. The offspring of an immigrant family who made a fortune in lead, silver and copper mines, Solomon mined gold in Alaska. At the end of the 19th century, this workaholic, who worked around the clock, began collecting works of old masters. After World War I, he left the business to focus on collecting. A decisive role in shaping the views of the Guggenheim was played by a meeting with the German artist Baroness Hilla von Riebe, who introduced the patron to abstract art. An avid collector herself, she became a friend and advisor to the Guggenheim, who now devoted his life to collecting works of contemporary art.

In 1937, the patron founded the Guggenheim Foundation, and two years later opened his first Museum of Non-Objective Painting in a rented apartment in Manhattan ". His collection already included paintings by Kandinsky, Mondrian, Chagall, Leger, Picasso. The collection grew rapidly, and in 1943 Hilla Ribay asked the great Frank Lloyd Wright to design a special building for the museum. Wright took this idea very seriously. Work on the project lasted 15 years, but the museum building was opened in October 1959, after the death of the architect. The Guggenheim himself did not see the museum either: he died in the late forties.

Wright created a cylindrical cylinder in the center of Manhattan, a building expanding upward, which he interpreted as a "temple of the spirit." According to the architect's plan, visitors to the museum must first take an elevator under the roof of the building, and then go down a continuous spiral ramp, inspecting the exposition along the way. Public opinion did not immediately accept Wright's idea. Artists even signed petitions against the "corkscrew" design.

Nevertheless, the museum is now visited by about three million people a year. It houses first-class collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, non-figurative painting and sculpture. Here are the works of modernist sculptors - Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder (the founder of kinetic sculpture), Alberto Giacometti. At the same time, the museum has the true masterpieces of Paul Gauguin ("Man and Horse"), Edouard Manet ("Before the Mirror", "Woman in Evening Dress"), Camille Pizarro ("The Hermitage at Pontoise"), Vincent Van Gogh ("Snowy Landscape", "Mountains at Saint-Remy"), Pablo Picasso ("Fourteenth of July "," Three Bathers "). The collection here includes about 150 works by Wassily Kandinsky.

Unlike many museums, the Guggenheim does not divide its collection into sections dedicated to eras and styles. The collection is conceived and exhibited as a single whole, which is constantly replenished with works of new talents - often paradoxical.

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Topic: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum description and photos - USA: New York.