Free Confessions of an Art Addict by Peggy Guggenheim Page A

Grenoble, I offered him either this painting or a Tanguy for a present. But when he asked me for the hundredth time if it were a Klee and I said, ‘No,’ he chose the Tanguy. In spite of all this, he loved modern art and managed to collect quite a few paintings for his museum without any funds. It was because of his taste, which the Germans hated, that he nearly lost his job with the Vichy government.
    Laurence Vail now decided that it would be safer for me to go to America in the spring and take our children. We were perpetually threatened with German occupation of all of France, and we knew that the United States would sooner or later enter the war and then we would be cut off from all financial resources. The American consuls, too, were urging us to go home. Worse still was the fear that I, as a Jewess, would be put in a concentration camp. Iwanted to go to Vichy to ask our Ambassador to help me get my collection to America, but it was a very cold winter and we were snowbound. So my hands were tied.
    Just at this time, René le Fevre Foinet arrived in Grenoble. He was one of the partners of the firm who had done all my shipping and packing from Paris to London when I had the gallery there. I told him my troubles, and to my great surprise he said nothing could be easier than to ship my collection to New York as household objects, provided I could send some personal belongings with it. He suggested my little Talbot car, which I had left in a garage for six months, as there was no more petrol in France for civilians. The only trouble was that I had forgotten which garage. We went to every garage in Grenoble before we found it, and then we went to work and packed up the whole collection, and René sent it off with some sheets and pots and pans.
    During my stay in Grenoble, I received a cable from Tanguy’s new wife, Kay Sage. She had taken him to America and was now trying to help other European artists to get there. She wanted me to pay the passage of five ‘distinguished’ artists. When I cabled to inquire who they might be, I received the reply: André Breton, his wife and child, Max Ernst and Dr Mabille, the Surrealist doctor. I protested, saying that neither Breton’s wife nor his child, nor Dr Mabille were distinguished artists, but I did accept the charge of the Breton family and Max Ernst. I was also trying to get Victor Brauner, who was a Jew, toAmerica. He was in hiding as a shepherd in the mountains near Marseilles, and since Breton was in Marseilles, I went there to visit the Emergency Rescue Committee, which was doing a splendid job. It was run by Varian Fry, who raised a lot of money which he distributed among stranded refugees who were in hiding from the Gestapo. He worked underground to get them into Spain and Portugal or Africa, and from there to America or Cuba. He also helped to repatriate British soldiers who were still in France after Dunkirk and wanted to join De Gaulle.
    Fry lived in an enormous dilapidated château called ‘Belle Air’, outside Marseilles. For assistants he had a former secretary of the prefect of police of Paris and his British wife. The Breton family were his guests. They had all been arrested and held incommunicado on a boat for several days during Pétain’s visit to Marseilles.
    Fry asked me to work with the committee. He wanted me to take his place while he was absent in the United States for a brief period. After consulting the American consul, I decided not to. The committee were doing a very dangerous job, of which I had absolutely no knowledge or experience, but I gave them a lot of money and went back to Grenoble.
    After I had promised to pay Max Ernst’s passage to America, Laurence Vail suggested that I ask Max to give me a painting in exchange. He wrote to say he would be delighted to do so, and sent me a photograph of one which I did not feel very enthusiastic about. I wrote back to say Imight prefer another one In the