SIR ROLAND PENROSE (BRITISH 1900–1984)
EDUCATION, 1983
£3,528
Auction: 15 JANUARY 2025 FROM 10:00 GMT
Description
collage
Dimensions
54.5cm x 80cm (21 ½in x 31 ½in)
Provenance
Sotheby's, London, 1 March 1989, lot 193;
Sandra Lummis Fine Art, London, from whom acquired by Bernard Kelly.
Footnote
Exhibited:
Gardener Centre Gallery, University of Sussex, Brighton, Roland Penrose - Recent Collages, 1984, cat.11
Roland Penrose championed Surrealism in London by organising the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition. An art historian and writer, Penrose also created his own Surrealist collages and conceived a genre of ‘collage painting’ featuring idiosyncratic imagery painted as if it were collaged.
After graduating from Cambridge University, Penrose relocated to France in 1922, marrying the surrealist poet Valentine Boué, through whom he met André Breton and Paul Éluard, who in the same year founded the First Manifesto of Surrealism. This, in turn, led to introductions to Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Picasso and Man Ray. When these artists found themselves short of money, Penrose would help by purchasing their work, and thus he amassed a significant and important collection of Surrealist, Cubist and Dadaist work. He also arranged for his friend Picasso’s painting Guernica to tour the UK to raise funds for the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. In 1947 Penrose co-founded London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.