Roland PENROSE - Pablo PICASSO and the surrealists in London in 1936.

Roland PENROSE (1900.1984)

Autograph letter signed to André Breton.

A page in-4° on letterhead with his London address.

[London] May 19, 1936.

“I saw Skira last night and the lady who lent us the Picasso, “Woman with Golden Breasts””

Surrealism crosses borders: important letter from Roland Penrose to André Breton relating to two founding events of the surrealist movement which took place simultaneously in London and Paris in the spring of 1936.

The British surrealist artist first informed his French colleague of the sending of some photographs intended for “The Surrealist Exhibition of Objects”, organized from May 22 to 29, 1936, by Breton, at the Charles Ratton gallery in Paris .

At the same time, on the other side of the Channel, Penrose prepared " The International Surrealist Exhibition" - the first international surrealist exhibition across the Channel - which was held at the New Burlington Gallery, in London, from June 11 to July 4, 1936. Penrose delighted by the loan of a masterpiece by Pablo Picasso while worrying about the silence of Salvador Dalí.

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“Dear friend, Here are a few more photos – 2 Pre-Raphaelites and one for the exhibition – too late I fear but I am sending them anyway. Otherwise everything is fine. I saw Skira last night and the lady [Ingeborg Eichmann] who lends us the Picasso, “Woman with Golden Breasts” today.

It's only Dali who remains obscure [sic] I don't yet have a response from him and the films which have completely failed. I will write to you again in a few days. I wish you great success for the exhibition of the objects which [sic] I am sorry not to be able to attend. I send my regards to you both. Affectionately. Roland Penrose. »

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. “ The International Surrealist Exhibition” was organized by Roland Penrose, David Gascoyne and Herbert Read, with the active assistance of ELT Mesens and André Breton. This inaugural exhibition on British soil was a great success. Welcoming more than 20,000 visitors, André Breton considered, after the event, that the surrealist group in England was established. Convinced by this London success, Penrose, Breton, organized in 1938, with the help of Max Ernst and ELT Mesens, the first surrealist exhibition in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Picasso's masterpiece mentioned by Penrose, Woman with Golden Breasts, painted in 1913, was exhibited in London under catalog number 298. The work — on loan from the Czech art historian and collector Ingeborg Eichmann (1907.1980) — is now kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

. “The Surrealist Exhibition of Objects”, organized from May 22 to 29, 1936 at the Charles Ratton gallery by Breton, featured the works of Duchamp, Picasso, Ernst, Bellmer, Tanguy, Dalí, Giacometti, etc. rub shoulders with around a hundred primitive art objects. A true “exhibition-manifesto” of the surrealist approach, the event established itself as a key stage of the movement.