Valentine Penrose

Valentine Boué was born in 1898 to a military family in Mont-de-Marsan, Landes, France. The family moved to Paris when she was very young. In 1925, she married the English artist, historian and poet Roland Penrose (1900–1984) and joined the community of surrealists based in Paris, Mougins and England. The marriage was never consummated. Boué and her husband moved to Spain in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. In the same year she joined the workers militia in Spain to defend the revolution. Valentine and Roland had different viewpoints on traditions in India, Eastern thought, and philosophy, which all led to a growing distance between the two. They were divorced in 1937, but met again in London during the war, after which she lived half her time with her ex-husband and his second wife, the American photojournalist Lee Miller. This arrangement continued for the rest of her life. She joined the French Army in 1940. She died on 7 August 1978 in Chiddingly, East Sussex, England, in the house of her former husband. Boué was an independent woman who pushed against the social expectations set on her; as a woman she was expected to be a muse and object for male surrealist artists.

In the 1940s, Penrose made surrealist collages. Dons des Féminines (1951) combines her collages and poetry. One of her collages is The Real Women, 1938. Penrose's collage artwork utilizes formal elements of Surrealism while disapproving of the conceptual aspects of Surrealist art, most often in relation to gender roles. She was most outspoken about the brutality and misogyny sometimes depicted by Surrealists and was highly critical of certain figures within the movement, such as Max Ernst, who was also notable for his use of collage as a medium. Her husband, Roland Penrose, was a primarily visual artist who was a notable figure within the Surrealist movement while associating Valentine Penrose with other Surrealist artists. Much of Valentine Penrose's art was created using traditional art and collage images which were sourced from common publications such as journals, catalogues and books. Her portfolio includes various collages and a collage novel entitled Dons des Féminines, which incorporated her literary background in its composition. Dons des Féminines has been called the "archetypal surrealist book" since it uses compositional elements that are expected of Surrealist art. The format is fragmented and uses bilingual poetry in combination with the visual imagery of the collages to create disorientation and continuous translation. The images are arranged to create juxtapositions and lack of continuity and become increasingly complex. There are references to Penrose's other, more cohesive, literary work but the novel does not have a singular format. The background for the works is typically of natural scenery or a landscape in which foreign elements are added, sometimes symbolically to create paradoxes. The recurring themes throughout the novel are gender ambiguity, love and prophetic writing. Lesbian love, in particular, is an important theme in much of Penrose's work, but especially in Dons des féminines. Lesbian love is indeed a crucial theme in the book because it recounts the romantic escape of two women and their dreamlike adventures together. In addition, the author-collagist mentions the city of "Mytilene" to evoke the Sapphic island of Lesbos. This reference to the Mediterranean shows that exoticism is an important theme of the work, but also that Penrose inscribes herself into the Sapphic tradition of Renée Vivien, Natalie Barney or Charles Baudelaire to just a few emblematic figures.

Penrose, Valentine (1935). Herbe à la lune. Éluard, Paul (preface). Editions GLM. — (1937). Sorts de la lueur. Editions GLM. — (1937). Poèmes. Editions GLM. — (1951). Dons des Féminines. Éluard, Paul (preface); Penrose, Valentine (illustrator). Les pas Perdus. (Collages and poems by Valentine Penrose. One edition had additional illustrations by Pablo Picasso). — (1972). Les Magies. Les Mains Libres. — (2001). Colville, Georgiana M. M. (ed.). Ecrits d'une femme surréaliste. Paris: J. Losfeld. ISBN 978-2844120915. (Anthology of works of Valentine Penrose)

— (1936). Le Nouveau Candide. Editions GLM. — (1945). Martha's Opéra. Fontaine. — (1962). Erzsébet Báthory la Comtesse sanglante. Gallimard / Mercure de France.

— (1977). Poems and Narrations. Translated by Edwards, R. Littlehampton Book Services Ltd. ISBN 978-0856352072. — (2006). The Bloody Countess: Atrocities of Erzsébet Báthory. Translated by Trocchi, Alexander. Solar Books. ISBN 978-0-9714578-2-9. (Translation of Erzsébet Báthory la Comtesse sanglante)

Penrose acted in the following films: L'Age d'Or (1930), directed by Luis Buñuel La Garoupe (1937), directed by Man Ray