Venice memories, Museum Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, summer 1990

This is old photography of my son Luka and me, taken by my husband on a hot day of the 1990 summer, as our family staying in Venice for a short vacation, visited Museum Peggy Guggenheim.

Those were times with classic photo cameras and this photography is among the last photos we still keep in real photo albums, those with nice covers and full of nostalgic memories, sometimes with an old entry ticket from a museum neatly arranged between photos. There is a special reason that pic is very close to my heart, after so many years still bringing many memories back.

So here it is, a short story about this pic taken in a museum almost thirty years ago, on a sunny summer day…

At that time, around 1990’s, our family lived in Ljubljana (Slovenia was still part of dying Yugoslavia). My husband was employed as a young engineer, I was finishing my medicine studies, and our friend from Italy invited our family to spend a week in his empty apartment in Venice.

For me, visiting Venice for the first time it’s been a week of fascination with Venice, its architecture, its museums, its precious glass and textile manufactures.

I remember we visited literally all the museums, galleries, churches of Venice that were open that summer, and just to save some money we visited museum Peggy Guggenheim on a free visit day, meaning it was crowded there at the time of our visit. I was fascinated by the people from all over the world waiting for the museum to open. That metropolitan public was sure part of cosmopolitan feeling I got entering the palace. Old Venetian palaces are often, like old houses at Slovenian coast, once part of Venetian republic, built in Istrian stone, cold even on the hottest August afternoons. And it was like a dream, escaping from the green Venetian canals and hot streets full of life to come in the palazzo, turned gallery, full of calm, deep shades from the garden playing silhouettes on the gallery walls, quietly observing visitors from around the world admiring artworks in semi silence. Just a sound from a passing boat, il gondoliere laughing, or a seagull call interrupted this atmosphere of dedication to pure art. And as far noises from outside kept persuading me the life is there, outside the gallery, in the canals, in the streets, I got a certain feeling the true life is in reality in here, between those walls, among paintings, sculptures. It was a strong feeling of art being true life that I couldn’t understand at the time, but it hadn’t left me since then, a feeling staying with me for the rest of my life. And so, since that summer there hasn’t been a museum or a gallery in a city I was visiting, not to go there, in eternal search for the art talking to me, strong and without compromises.

It took me a lot of time to recognize that the art call I felt visiting Peggy Guggenheim museum for the first time was meant for me. Many years later I’ve discovered the great passion in my life is art, being happy enough to start art career by myself….