Roland Penrose

In 1938, as Europe prepared for war. Roland Penrose and Lee Miller made a journey together through the Balkans. Penrose was a painter, author and curator, Miller, previously a model, had had succesful photographic studios in Paris and New York, and was a brilliant photographer. As they travelled Penrose created pictures and took notes. On their return Penrose produced a charming handmade photobook for Miller, a surrealist love poem, drawn from his own memories and records. A limited edition of the book was soon printed. The first of which he personalised for Lee Miller.

The beautifully illustrated book of Love Letters between Lee Miller and Roland Penrose begins when they first met at a fancy dress party in Paris, June 1937. Through the letters it tracks their love affair, adventures, creative work, involvement with the surrealist art movement, scandal and laughs to the background of a world that is building up to the beginning of the Second World War.

Sir Roland Penrose CBE (14 October 1900 - 23 April 1984) was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the key Surrealists in Europe. During the Second World War he put his artistic skills to practical use as a teacher of camouflage. He was Lecturer to the War Office School for Instructors to the Home Guard and also a Lecturer at the Osterley Park School for Training of the Home Guard.

A new edition of this classic survey on the life and work of Spanish surrealist, Joan Miró, by his close friend, historian and fellow artist Roland Penrose. Among the great 20th-century masters, the surrealist painter Joan Miró stands out for the atmosphere of wit and spontaneity that pervades his work. Miró’s 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 Miró’s 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.

In 1938, as Europe prepared for war. Roland Penrose and Lee Miller made a journey together through the Balkans. Penrose was a painter, author and curator, Miller, previously a model, had had succesful photographic studios in Paris and New York, and was a brilliant photographer. As they travelled Penrose created pictures and took notes. On their return Penrose produced a charming handmade photobook for Miller, a surrealist love poem, drawn from his own memories and records. A limited edition of the book was soon printed and Penrose embellished a small number with a series of Imaginative tipped in colour motifs. The first of which he personalised for Lee Miller.

Intimate, yet objective; comprehensive, yet enthralling; this biography of the greatest artists of our century will rank with Vasari in the annals of European painting.--Sir Herbert Read