Roland Penrose

As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900-1984) is a key figure in the study of art in England from 1920 to 1984. In the first biography of Penrose, acclaimed biographer James King explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and work tracing the profound effects of his upbringing in a Quaker household on his values, the early influence of Roger Fry, his friendships with Max Ernst, Andre Breton and other surrealists, especially Paul Eluard, his organization of the landmark International Surrealist Exhibition in the summer of 1936, his conflicted relationship with Pablo Picasso, and his tireless promotion of surrealism as well as the production of his own surrealist art. With a deftness of touch, King traces Penrose's complex professional and personal lives, including his pacifism, his work as a biographer - including his outstanding life of Picasso as well as those of Miro, Man Ray, and Tapies - and as an art historian, as well as his unconventionality, especially in his two marriages - including that to Lee Miller -and his numerous love affairs.

"The friendly Surrealist", an apt description for Roland Penrose, the man who more than any other nurtured the friendships and connections which introduced European Surrealism to the British art world.

This book offers an unprecedented insight into one of the most fascinating artistic relationships of the 20th century.

Among the great 20th-century masters, the surrealist painter Joan Miró stands out for the atmosphere of wit and spontaneity that pervades his work. Mirós art went through many phases, and its major features his signs and symbols, his series of anguished peintures sauvages in the 1930s, his lyrical, poetic gouaches, his monumental sculptures and ceramics, his unprecedented use of poetic titles, and his attachment to nature and to the night are discussed here by Roland Penrose, a friend of the artist for almost five decades. A brief epilogue by Eduardo de Benito, London correspondent of the Spanish art periodical Lápiz, illustrates the developments of Mirós last years. This new revised edition, now illustrated in colour throughout, includes a foreword by Antony Penrose, outlining the relationship between his father and the artist, as well as updates to the Bibliography.

"This joint biography tells the story of how a fashion model turned photographer and an English Quaker turned Surrealist painter and art collector influenced modern art with their vision and passion. As they inspired each other's careers and established their home as a meeting place for the exchange of ideas among artists such as Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, Joan Miro, and Saul Steinberg, Miller and Penrose created a life together that was in itself a work of art. In the book concise accounts of their lives are followed by comparisons of their works, which demonstrate their symbiotic relationship. The range of art reproduced in the book - photographs, sketches, paintings, and collages - offers a kaleidoscopic sampling of these two important oeuvres and an exquisite portrayal of a unique and uniquely productive partnership."--Amazon.

Draws on Penrose's private notebooks and correspondences to offer insight into his friendship with the artistic master, from Penrose's personal observations of Picasso's achievements and behaviors to his recordings of the words and actions of some of the artist's closest friends and family members.