Peggy Guggenheim opened Guggenheim Jeune at 30 Cork Street in London with an exhibition of Jean Cocteau's work. The opening placed Guggenheim beside the city's Surrealist network, including Roland Penrose and E. L. T. Mesens, and depended heavily on Marcel Duchamp's advice; Duchamp was in London helping select and hang Cocteau works when the Paris International Surrealist Exhibition opened. The gallery became Guggenheim's first sustained experiment as a modern-art dealer and patron. Its short run introduced or promoted artists including Cocteau, Kandinsky, Yves Tanguy, Wolfgang Paalen, Henry Moore, Brancusi, Arp, Ernst, Picasso, Braque, and Schwitters, while shaping the collecting strategy that later fed Art of This Century and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
The gallery launched Guggenheim's public role as a collector-dealer who helped move European avant-garde art into Anglo-American circulation.
