TOYEN Czechoslovakia 1902-1980 La visiteuse vertige - Les sept épées hors du fourreau Signed and dated Toyen 1957. Oil on canvas, 150 x 50 cm. EXHIBITED Les sept épées hors du fourreau, Galerie Furstenberg, Paris 1958 LITERATURE Toyen, Jean Saucet och Radovan Ivsic: La Septième face du dé, Paris 1974, illustrated page 57 Ragnar von Holten: Domaine du Rêve, Toyen - Toyen - En surrealistisk visionär, Köping 1984, illustrated page 57 Karel Srp: Toyen, Prague 2000, illustrated page 22 "What remains of the Prague that Apollinaire extolled?" asked André Breton the figurehead of the surrealists, in 1953. "Toyen", was the answer he supplied himself. The fact that Prague would never be itself again after the war meant less as long as Toyen was alive and was Prague: the bearer of a special kind of light and beauty, brim full of poetry and contradictions. "Toyen was a Czech artist who took her name from citoyen, the French for "citizen". Her real name was actually Marie Cermínová. She was born in Prague in 1902, moved to Paris in 1947 and remained there until her death in 1980. As early as the 1920s, when she first visited Paris, she met the surrealists and soon came to adopt a number of their ideas about alchemy, minerals and dreams, for example. Today the name Toyen stands together with those of Dali, Magritte and Max Ernst as one of the great visionaries in the history of surrealist art - those who succeeded in giving shape to the invisible. It has even been said that Toyen made documentary images of what is not seen. However, her art progressed through several stages of development. In the 1920s, her idiom was abstract and she painted atmospheres rather than landscapes. She did not formulate her own personal image universe until the 1930s. After that, she travelled the borderland between real and surreal with ambiguous messages, while simultaneously keeping parts of her work hermetically sealed, secretive and impossible to interpret. Many of her works are saturated with erotic tension and a longing for closeness while at the same time communicating distance and a desire for protection. All Toyen's works have to do with the dualism in man: the wild animal and the human aspect, the confrontation between reality and fantasy". Exhibition text for Toyen 1902-1980, Moderna museet, Stockholm1985 by Ragnar von Holten.
TOYEN Czechoslovakia 1902-1980 La visiteuse vertige - Les sept épées hors du fourreau Signed and dated Toyen 1957. Oil on canvas, 150 x 50 cm. EXHIBITED Les sept épées hors du fourreau, Galerie Furstenberg, Paris 1958 LITERATURE Toyen, Jean Saucet och Radovan Ivsic: La Septième face du dé, Paris 1974, illustrated page 57 Ragnar von Holten: Domaine du Rêve, Toyen - Toyen - En surrealistisk visionär, Köping 1984, illustrated page 57 Karel Srp: Toyen, Prague 2000, illustrated page 22 "What remains of the Prague that Apollinaire extolled?" asked André Breton the figurehead of the surrealists, in 1953. "Toyen", was the answer he supplied himself. The fact that Prague would never be itself again after the war meant less as long as Toyen was alive and was Prague: the bearer of a special kind of light and beauty, brim full of poetry and contradictions. "Toyen was a Czech artist who took her name from citoyen, the French for "citizen". Her real name was actually Marie Cermínová. She was born in Prague in 1902, moved to Paris in 1947 and remained there until her death in 1980. As early as the 1920s, when she first visited Paris, she met the surrealists and soon came to adopt a number of their ideas about alchemy, minerals and dreams, for example. Today the name Toyen stands together with those of Dali, Magritte and Max Ernst as one of the great visionaries in the history of surrealist art - those who succeeded in giving shape to the invisible. It has even been said that Toyen made documentary images of what is not seen. However, her art progressed through several stages of development. In the 1920s, her idiom was abstract and she painted atmospheres rather than landscapes. She did not formulate her own personal image universe until the 1930s. After that, she travelled the borderland between real and surreal with ambiguous messages, while simultaneously keeping parts of her work hermetically sealed, secretive and impossible to interpret. Many of her works are saturated with erotic tension and a longing for closeness while at the same time communicating distance and a desire for protection. All Toyen's works have to do with the dualism in man: the wild animal and the human aspect, the confrontation between reality and fantasy". Exhibition text for Toyen 1902-1980, Moderna museet, Stockholm1985 by Ragnar von Holten.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
