Surrealist before she knew of the movement Lee Miller was caustically brilliant, yet totally loyal, unpretentious, human and intolerant of sham. She was a consummate artist and a consummate clown; at once an upstate New York hick and cosmopolitan grande dame; a cold, soignée fashion model and a hoyden She was a mechanical tinker, in the sense that her friend [ the artist] Alexander Calder once called himself just a tinker. She was the nearest thing I knew to a mid-20th century renaissance woman described David E. Scherman, LIFE photographer and her very close friend.
Lee Miller was one of the most original photographic artists of the 20th century, her Surrealist eye informed everything she did. Her work presents the world in a way that encourages us to view it in a different manner.
Surrealist Lee Miller
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Notes on Images
Co-Director of Farleys House and Gallery Ltd which manages the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection. Antony Penrose is the son of the American photographer Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, surrealist artist and biographer of Picasso, Miró, Man Ray and Tąpies. Antony has written numerous books, articles and two plays on the subject of his parents and their associates. The movie LEE released in 2024 starring Kate Winslet as Lee Miller is based on his biography The Lives of Lee Miller. He lectures widely and is a curator of photography, an artist and film maker in his own right.
