Peggy Guggenheim was a progressive and forward-thinking patron and collector. Her singular career spanned the modern era, linking the Dada and Surrealist movements with Abstract Expressionism. She collected and championed artists, made few distinctions between her business and private lives: her two marriages were to artists, Dadaist Laurence Vail and Surrealist Max Ernst, amid a string of liaisons and intrigues with the likes of Samuel Beckett and Constantin Brancusi. A saying goes that she collected men as she collected art but really, both aspects of her life were intertwined. Peggy spent a major part of her life in Venice where she established her know renowned museum. There, she acquired a wicked notoriety and grew into a kind of grande-dame eminence.