The Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents the exhibition Rita Kernn-Larsen. Surrealist Paintings, curated by Gražina Subelytė, Curatorial Assistant of the Collection, inaugurating its “Project Rooms”: two new exhibition rooms at the museum dedicated to focused exhibitions.

Rita Kernn-Larsen (Hillerød, 1904–Copenhagen, 1998), a prominent Danish Surrealist artist, whom Peggy Guggenheim met in Paris in 1937, was invited by Peggy the following year to exhibit her paintings at Guggenheim Jeune, Peggy’s London gallery, a show which inaugurated Peggy’s career with Surrealist art. This new exhibition brings together exquisite Surrealist paintings by Kernn-Larsen, to this day too little known outside Denmark. This will be the first important presentation of Kernn-Larsen’s Surrealist period outside of her native Scandinavia since her one-woman exhibition at Guggenheim Jeune. More than half of the paintings selected for the show were also exhibited in Peggy’s 1938 exhibition.

The exhibition brings together Surrealist paintings by Kernn-Larsen from public and private collections in Denmark, including the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, Kunstmuseet i Tønder, and the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg. Photographs and other ephemeral material related to Kernn-Larsen’s exhibition at the Guggenheim Jeune gallery will also be on display. Last but not least, a film-interview with Kernn-Larsen recorded on the occasion of her participation in the 1986 Venice Biennale will be on view in the museum’s veranda. Daily 3 p.m. free presentations of the exhibition.

CATALOGUE
Rita Kernn-Larsen. Surrealist Paintings will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, in English and Italian, with essays by Gražina Subelytė and the Danish art historian Johan Zimsen.