David E. Scherman, Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub, Munich, April 1945, 1945, black-and-white photograph, 9 x 9".
Renowned for a considerable Surrealist collection, this gallery counts among its treasures works once owned by Roland Penrose (1900-84), friend and biographer of Picasso, painter, writer, animator of the British art scene, and key player in the founding of London’s ICA. The SNGMA has assembled nearly 200 artworks, including Penrose’s natty collages, in a major show that complements the museum’s celebration of the photography of his American wife, Lee Miller (1907-77). Some 200 works confirm that this beautiful muse who inspired Picasso, Man Ray, and Steichen was a perspicacious portraitist, an unflinching recorder of World War II, and no mean fashion photographer.
