Valentine Penrose's Collages: Myth and Metamorphosis as Visual Explorations of Identity

This essay intends to present Valentine Penrose's collages realised from the 1930s up to her visual poem Dons des féminines in 1951. By visually analysing the principles of metamorphosis and hybridisation of forms of alchemical ancestry (with the omnipresent principles of the feminine and masculine) that characterised these collages, as well as the artist’s archival material, this article intends to shed new light on Valentine Penrose’s growing interest both in alchemy and astrology that she developed over the 1930s in the Surrealist context.