The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, in Venice. Peggy Guggenheim, a former wife of artist Max Ernst, purchased this building in 1949. Although sometimes mistaken for a modern designed building, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is an 18th century palace designed by the Venetian architect Lorenzo Boschetti.

The palazzo was Peggy Guggenheim’s home for thirty years and was opened as a gallery in April 1980 after her death in 1979. The garden in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is now called the Nasher Sculpture Garden, which has a varied collection of objects. There is some interesting stuff in this intimate space but…

Three Standing Figures, 1953

Bronze, 73.2 x 68 x 29 cm, including base

Henry Moore

I have always associated Henry Moore as being a sculptor who created ‘blobby’ organic forms that have weight and feminine curves.

This spiky bronze has derivative influences varying from African art and to the Surrealist sculpture of Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti. If you get close to the sculpture there are redeeming features but the static poses of the figures and the clumsy references to an eclectic range of styles really exposes the failures of this piece – not a great sculpture – if you compare it to the Giacometti that stands nearby…