Important collectors, like Peggy Guggenheim, have become almost as famous, if not more so, than the artists they nurtured and collected.

As colorful and daring as the art she collected, Peggy Guggenheim was one of the most important figures in the twentieth-century art world. Born into a wealthy New York family, she traveled throughout Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, where she was witness to the development of the most influential art movements. With a keen eye and exalted social standing, she amassed one of the most significant, privately owned, modern art collections in the world from her palazzo in Venice, Italy.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art is the only complete book on this exceptional collection and the woman who created it. Through several essays and extended captions, every aspect of Guggenheim\'s collection is explained-the breadth of which is astonishing. From the earliest examples of abstraction by Piet Mondrian to the controlled abandon of Jackson Pollock\'s drip paintings, her intuition regarding the important trends in modern art was almost clairvoyant. Her extraordinary vision and meticulous assembly is traced beautifully with over 150 color illustrations and not only chronicles the development of a great collection and the life of a socialite eccentric, but more importantly, the history of modern art itself.