Interviewer: What do you think have been the most important influences in your life?
Roland Penrose: To begin with of course Quakerism and I suppose after that Surrealism.
Antony Penrose: I think what drew Roland to Surrealism
was that fundamental to the surrealist beliefs
was the importance of peace and freedom and justice
and Roland was brought up as a Quaker.
He never ever rejected the Quaker values
of peace and freedom and justice
and those fitted perfectly with the surrealist ideals
Roland became a surrealist by marriage, if you like
because he met and fell in love with a surrealist poet
who was called Valentine Bouet
and she introduced him to the leaders of the movement
who were blazing this fantastically exciting trail
with this art movement that was way beyond an art movement
it was a way of life
And that, I think, really excited Roland
and he became a surrealist artist.
Roland Penrose: They were mostly a very vigorous
boisterous group of young people
who were very excited about the new ideas
that were coming chiefly from Breton, Eluard, Tzara
and so my life from the seclusion
the cloistered seclusion of Cambridge began to change rather rapidly.
Interviewer: “And Max Ernst was your introduction to the surrealist group?”
Roland Penrose: Yes, an odd thing happened there too
Because, looking round the studio
I saw a picture hung rather high up on the wall.
It was a big white canvas with a big blue splodge on it
and underneath the blue splodge it had
Ceci est le couleur de mes rêves
this is the colour of my dreams
and I went away thinking
Max has really opened doors into a new world
the world of dreams, the world of the imagination.
It wasn’t until some years later that I discovered
that that picture was not by Max at all
it was by his neighbour; Miró.
He was able to acquire works by people like Max Ernst
really at mates rates
support buying those who were having a really hard time.
But he never set out to become a collector.
He describes in his biography
the collection that collected itself
it was him really taking the opportunity
of that thing that the surrealists’ love – chance
and running with it at the time.
Roland Penrose: Surrealism became a cause to me, almost
because Surrealism was not just a new school of painting
it was a way of life which relied very much on
spontaneity, the unconscious and
I had a feeling there should be much more human justice
and human understanding, in society in general.
Antony Penrose: The early days of curating and presenting Surrealism in Britain
were really fraught
because the establishment hated it and actually Roland rather liked this.
I think he felt that if the establishment
wasn’t reacting they were doing something wrong
they were missing the point.
Narrator: A strange looking carving, by the modern sculptor Henry Moore
watches the arrival of a young lady
whose comings and goings make news.
The name is Lee Miller.
Lee Miller moved in with him in 1939
and their household became a tremendously continuous party
of all kinds of people, particularly in 1942
when the Americans showed up
there were even guerrilla fighters and spies
of course nobody knew them as that at the time.
I think being friends with
this slightly stepped back, rather shy
very British person was a surreal thing in itself
because that person, that British, shy person
was as committed to being a Surrealist
as the rest of the French were
but he sure didn't look like it on the outside.
I think it was the enormous mixing of talent during the war years
that inspired Roland to start the ICA.
And it just continued like that
but on a slightly more formal footing.
And in that moment Roland began to make the switch
from being a painter to being a curator
And that was a massive change in his life
I think he gave up painting
because he always compared himself harshly and unfavourably
to his contemporaries.
He felt he could never be as good as them
and the best thing he could do
would be to promote their work.
And it was a tremendously wonderful thing that he did
because it caused a huge sea change
in modern art in Britain at that time.
Wider…
The road is wider than long.
Trees are thicker than tall.
Wells reached to the clouds.
Their blood is more solid than their bones
Bones, blood, blood…
In 1949, the focus just shifted to Farley Farm House
and people came at the weekends from all over the place
from all over the world in fact
exchanging ideas and inventing things
and putting exhibitions together.
It was the most exciting time to be around
and it went on like that for a long time
in fact Roland was still encouraging
young artists right up to when he died in 1984.