Roland Penrose Lee Miller The Surrealist And The Photographer

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

Written by Anthony Penrose, son of American photographer and feminist icon Lee Miller and British artist Roland Penrose, this work provides a personal insight into their life together at Farley Farm, Sussex where they played host to some of the greatest 20th-century artists.

"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.

A highly readable biography of uniquely talented artist Lee Miller, now in compact paperback. Collected in this compelling volume are the many lives of Lee Miller, intimately recorded by her son, Antony Penrose, whose years of work on her photographic archives have unearthed a rich selection of her finest work, including portraits of her friends Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Paul Eluard, and Joan Miró. Starting in 1927 in New York, this volume chronicles Lee Miller as she is discovered as a model by Condé Nast, hits the cover of Vogue, and is immortalized by Edward Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst, and other acclaimed photographers. From there, readers follow Miller to Paris where she, along with Man Ray, invented the solarization technique of photography, and where she developed into a brilliant Surrealist photographer. Finally, this account covers the later chapters of her life, when she became a war correspondent during World WarII, traveling with the Allied armies to cover the siege of Saint-Malo and the liberation of Paris, which lead to her photographs of the Dachau concentration camp that shocked the world. A highly readable biography of a uniquely talented artist, The Lives of Lee Miller is now published in compact paperback.

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.

American-born artist Lee Miller (1907-1977) has been increasingly championed by scholars and curators for her Surrealism-inspired photographs. Her captivating images of Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s, her dreamlike portraits of desert landscapes and sexually suggestive architecture taken in Egypt in the mid-1930s, and her witty, yet often disturbing, photographs of the Second World War and its aftermath have been widely discussed. However, while popular interest in Miller’s colourful life and photographic work has been rapidly growing during the past forty years, her true worth as a prominent Surrealist artist has been somewhat overlooked. This new collection of essays addresses this issue, revalidating Lee Miller’s Surrealist position, not simply as a muse, friend, and collaborator with the Surrealists, but as one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential female Surrealist artists.

These photographic 'zines' from the home of Lee Miller, Farleys House and Gallery, look at life through the lens of Lee Miller and her husband, the Surrealist artist RolandPenrose and were produced to accompany three exhibitions at the house. Lee Miller at Farley Farm, Picasso at PlayandRoland Penrose's Surrealist Cameraare full of fascinating photographs, illustrating different aspects of life at Farley Farm, the work of Miller and Penrose, the people they met throughout their careers, and the life they built together after the Second World War in this quiet, undisturbed corner of Sussex.