To him they were just friends of his parents, the fascinating couple formed by Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. She had been a war correspondent, a fashion model, lover of some artists and muse of them all. He was the ambassador of surrealism, an intellectual agitator, a rebellious artist and world famous biographer. Both are the protagonists of this year’s events to mark Picasso’ birthday month, with exhibitions of works loaned by their son Anthony Penrose, who has shared some of his childhood memories with SUR.

What childhood memories you must have, surrounded by such great artists!

My childhood was rather unusual in that my family was very friendly with a great many important artists and they used to invite them to our home frequently. But to me as a child they were not important artists, just interesting people, and it never occurred to me that some of them were really important, like for example Picasso. What I remember about the first time I met Picasso when I was very small was that he smelt good; he smelt of cologne and of Gauloise cigarettes. He was very good at playing. We played at bullfighters. Even though he was very old, well into his 60s or 70s, but he was a person of great warmth. One time when we were playing together I bit him and he bit me back and in the moment before I started to yell, my mother heard Picasso say ‘Ha, That’s the first Englishman I’ve ever bitten’. After that we visited him in his house in Cannes and it was always a very happy occasion. The house was full of animals; there was a goat that used to live outside his bedroom door, and he made nesting boxes for pigeons that flew around his bedroom. There were always dogs and cats and parrots... it was a very happy place. He enjoyed playing, he had a big selection of masks and hats and everyone had to put one on and Picasso has his favourite mask. We always enjoyed this clown routine. The last time I saw him I was 14 or 15 when he was living in Mougins. Then he was very elderly but he still had the same warmth and kindness he had when I was a child.

And what about the other friends of your parents?

I was very fond of Miró. I did not know him well but he had a very attractive quietness and warmth about him. Max Ernst was not so easy. He had a very German intensity but it’s exciting to see there is an exhibition of his work in the Picasso Museum and I’m looking forward to visiting it. I guess the guy I liked the most was Man Ray because he was so funny; he made really good jokes and he was very good an inventing things. One time we were fooling around and he invented a device for swatting flies. It was very funny but we got into trouble because there were dead flies all over the walls.

Your mother left an archive of more than 40,000 images that you now administrate. Did these photographs help you understand her better?

I only really got to know her through her photographs and through her writings. When I was a child she was seriously affected by her wartime experiences and she spent the first 20 years of my life in a state of depression and alcohol abuse. She recovered from this but I never really knew her or understood her. After she died, finding her work enabled me to find her as a person and as a mother.

These documents confirmed your mother’s love affair with Picasso, which didn’t seem to bother your father.

As a child I was always aware that they were very fond of each other, Picasso, Lee and Roland. It wasn’t until much later after they’d both died that I understood and found evidence that Picasso and Lee Miller had had an affair in 1937. It was with the full approval of my father that they all shared each other. In those times there was nothing unusual about it. They believed it made their friendship stronger if anything. It’s not something I would like to try! The biggest evidence is in the way that Picasso painted Lee Miller six times. When you look at the paintings you realise there is a very erotic sense to them. Picasso painted the last one of the series four days after my mother left the place where they were staying so she must have left an impression on him.

The fascination in your mother stemmed from her great beauty but also from her intense biography. Is that why you called your book about her “The lives of Lee Miller”, in plural?

Yes, it was always easier to get an audience for Lee Miller because first of all she was beautiful and then she had a very spectacular life. It’s been much more difficult to raise interest in my father’s work because, although he was a very good painter, he didn’t have that sensational quality. What is interesting now is that people are looking more closely at Lee Miller as an artist and the fact that she was beautiful and had wild life is much less important. With my father people are beginning to appreciate him as a painter. For many years he was thought of as being the man who wrote the key biography of Picasso. Now my father is being better understood as an artist. As a painter he was overshadowed by his contemporaries like Max Ernst, Miró and Picasso and it’s now rewarding to see him claiming his rightful place in the whole picture of painters from his time. A really important part of that process is this exhibition here in Malaga.

Do you think that the work of both your mother and father has been unfairly overlooked?

Yes, that is why this double exhibition in Malaga is so important to establish them both as important artists.

Your father had a close relationship with Spanish art.

My father’s connections with Spain go back a long way. He came here first in 1936 when he visited Cataluña on a mission to report on how the Republican forces were treating important works of art. He was able to report back in London that they were being well cared for. Later he made many visits to Malaga and Barcelona and other parts of Spain to collect information on Picasso. This was when he and Lee Miller took these photographs (in the catalogue of the exhibition now open) of Malaga. Later he was the person who wrote the first biography of Antoni Tàpies which helped Tàpies’s international reputation immediately. And it brought a lot of attention to Catalan artists. Then it was satisfying that it was a Barcelona publisher who published Roland Penrose’s autobiography in 1981. So he always had strong connections with Spain. He used to say that in order to understand Picasso better he first had to understand Spain. He knew the passion, the dark and the light together, the sense of the bullfight with its violence, and also the hardness of the country which at the same time goes with a poetic sense and spirituality.

Has you father’s advice worked for you?

Every time I come to Spain I advance my understanding a little. Malaga is so rich in Picasso.