Archipelago Toyen: New Work on the Czech Avant-Garde Artist

Abstract

Toyen (1902–80, born Marie Čermínová), a Czech avant-garde artist who spent most of her life and career in France, associated with a multitude of art groups that were dominated by the ideas of surrealism. She was a seeker and traveler who enjoyed collaboration with friends of any gender, nationality, or identity as a vehicle for her individual creativity. Toyen's fascinating and extensive body of work in a variety of media, ranging from painting to printing and design; her profound and lasting associations with more commonly known and often male artists, such as André Breton, Paul Éluard, or Benjamin Péret; as well as her charismatic, sexually ambivalent personality have increasingly become the focus of study. This no doubt has and will attract a growing number of sophisticated and high-quality research projects by scholars from different backgrounds working in a variety of languages. Two examples of such recent works are briefly examined in this review: Karla Huebner's monograph Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic and the international exhibition Toyen: The Dreaming Rebel and its accompanying catalog.