April 20, 2009

Antony Penrose is the son of fascinating artists, photographer Lee Miller and painter Roland Penrose. Currently, Antony is Director of the Lee Miller Archive and Roland Penrose Estate and oversees the Farley Farmhouse, their art filled farm where he grew up with his unconventional parents. Penrose will lecture on "Lee Miller in Egypt,' which covers Miller in the 1930's when she photographed extensively in Northern Africa, on April 28th at 6 PM in the A.J. Drexel Picture Gallery.

Last year, Antony spoke at Drexel when he was in town for the Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition "The Art of Lee Miller.' We were so taken with his talk about his parents' art and their many friends and contemporaries -- Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Miro and Max Ernst -- that we've invited him back, this time for a several day residency as a Rankin Scholar in Residence. Due to the success of his "Art of Lee Miller' lecture Antony will present it again for students and the University community on Wednesday April 29th at 5:30 PM in Ruth Auditorium. Finally, he will conduct a dramatic reading of The Angel and the Fiend, a play he wrote about his mother, on Thursday, April 30th at 6 PM in Ruth Auditorium.

Penrose's parents were a complicated and gifted couple. Miller was a lover to some of her famous artist friends and a muse for far more. Roland Penrose was the ambassador of surrealism, an intellectual agitator, a rebellious artist and world famous biographer. Lee Miller, after a successful modeling career for Vogue, became a noted war correspondent for the US Army in 1944, and witnessed the Liberation of Paris, the fighting in Luxembourg and Alsace, and the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau.