iRoyal Academy of ArtsPiccadilly
Peggy Guggenheim in London
Explores Guggenheim's short-lived Guggenheim Jeune gallery (1938-39) and how it introduced avant-garde art to London.
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Preview: written before the show opened
In January 1938 Peggy Guggenheim opened her first gallery at 30 Cork Street, around the corner from the Royal Academy. It lasted 18 months and put on more than 20 shows, including Kandinsky's first UK solo show and a sculpture exhibition whose works the Director of the Tate questioned as art when they reached British customs.
In the Sackler Wing, more than 80 works follow that programme show by show. It opens on portraits and the 1938 exhibition of children's art, where a teenage Lucian Freud first exhibited, then moves through Kandinsky, Mondrian and Taeuber-Arp, collage and Marie Vassilieff's puppets, and closes with Surrealism. Walk out and around the corner afterwards and you're on the street where it all happened.
Reviewing the same show at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2026, Apollo's Christopher Turner found Guggenheim's "personality and trademark flamboyance" somewhat lost in the show-by-show approach. Tickets are £17, under-16s go free with a paying adult, and it's open until 9pm Fridays and Saturdays.
Editor's pick
Tanguy's shell earrings, a teenage Lucian Freud and Vassilieff's puppets: more than 80 works from Guggenheim Jeune, Peggy Guggenheim's Cork Street gallery of 1938–39. Apollo, reviewing the Venice showing, found her "personality and trademark flamboyance" somewhat lost.
Look for
Tanguy's earrings for Peggy
Look for two shells, one blue-green and one pink, each painted with a tiny Surrealist picture and set in silver and gold with pearls.
Kernn-Larsen's Self-portrait (Know Thyself)
The leaves on a tree branch turn into a woman's lips in this 1937 self-portrait, first shown in Guggenheim Jeune's Surrealist exhibition.
Lucian Freud's Old Man Running
Freud's first publicly exhibited work, made as a teenager, hangs in the opening section devoted to Guggenheim's 1938 show of children's art.
Marie Vassilieff's puppets
Portrait dolls made for French experimental theatre, which Apollo's critic called witty when he saw them in Venice.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
With kids
Under-16s go free with a fee-paying adult.
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Image credits
9
- Peggy Guggenheim in LondonCourtesy of Royal Academy of Arts
- RootsCourtesy of The Photographers' Gallery
- Sanlé Sory: Colour Years© Sanlé Sory, 2026. Courtesy of Tezeta.
- Snap Happy! How Children Became PhotographersCourtesy of The Photographers' Gallery
- Royal Academy of ArtsYair Haklai / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Photographers' GalleryThe wub / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National GalleryCarlos Delgado / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Portrait GalleryIstvánka / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Churchill War RoomsJenny Poole / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0