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Indepth Arts News:
"THE SURREALIST AND THE PHOTOGRAPHER: ROLAND PENROSE AND LEE MILLER
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2001-05-19 until 2001-09-09
National Galleries of Scotland, Dean Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art
Edinburgh, ,
UK
These two complementary exhibitions (Roland Penrose at the Dean; Lee Miller at the Gallery of Modern Art) will offer an unprecedented insight into the extraordinary lives of one of the most fascinating artistic couples of the twentieth century. The Englishman Roland Penrose (1900-1984) met the American Lee Miller (1907-1977) in Paris in 1937.
Already a Surrealist artist of considerable talent, Penrose became a tireless champion of modern art through his activities as a collector, writer and exhibition organiser. A former Vogue model, Lee Miller was a remarkable photographer who later contributed photographs to Penrose’s books on Picasso, Miró and other artists. After World War II, in which Penrose served as a camouflage officer and Miller was accredited to the U.S. Army as a war correspondent, they married and created a home in Sussex that was itself a work of art.
ROLAND PENROSE
THE DEAN GALLERY, Belford Road, Edinburgh
Roland Penrose (1900-1984) was a key figure in the development of modern art in Britain. This exhibition traces his work as a Surrealist artist, exhibition organiser, collector, writer, and general catalyst in the art world. At its height, Penrose’s remarkable collection included masterpieces by Picasso, Miró, De Chirico, Ernst, Magritte, Tanguy, Arp, Dalí and many other Surrealist works, as well as a fine group of ethnographic objects. An accomplished artist himself, he was a close friend to many of these figures, and wrote the first major English biography of Picasso. At a time when most public institutions in Britain pointedly ignored modern art, Penrose brought the European avant-garde into the country, organising the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, and drawing large crowds when he showed Picasso’s Guernica at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1938. The exhibition will coincide with the publication of Antony Penrose’s biography of his father, Roland Penrose: The Friendly Surrealist (Prestel).
LEE MILLER
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, Belford Road, Edinburgh
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