Toyen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Toyen (1930)

Toyen , actually Marie Čermínová (born September 21, 1902 in Prague , † November 9, 1980 in Paris ) was a Czech surrealist painter , draftsman and graphic artist and a representative of poetism .

Life

Marie Čermínová was born in Prague in 1902. At the age of 17, she turned away from her family and looked for a life beyond bourgeois standards. Around 1920 she attended the School of Applied Arts in Prague. In 1922 she met the poet Jindřich Štyrský , with whom she had a close artistic friendship until his death in 1942. Both worked in the radical and avant-garde Czech group Devětsil . She changed her name to Toyen , a derivative of French citoyen (citizen), and thus avoided the gender assignment of her name.

In 1925 she moved with Štyrský to Paris, where she participated in exhibitions and also had her first solo exhibition. They designed "poetic artificialism - an alternative to abstraction and surrealism".

In 1929 she returned to Prague. She took part in several exhibitions and was the only woman involved in founding the Czechoslovak Surrealist group in 1934. She was still in contact with André Breton and Paul Éluard . The Bouletin international du surrealisme was published together. Since then, Toyen has been involved in all international surrealist exhibitions, including the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris in 1938.

After the smashing of the rest of Czech Republic and the occupation of Prague by the National Socialists in 1939, Toyen stayed underground and was no longer able to work in public. She hid the Jewish artist colleague Jindřich Heisler in her apartment.

From 1947 she lived again in Paris, also to avoid Stalinism in her country. She was an important figure in the Paris surrealist group. Toyen died in 1980 at the age of 78 and rests on the Parisian Cimetière des Batignolles .

plant

Toyen began her first works under Cubist influence, which was followed by a brief turn to primitivism . From 1925 in Paris, in collaboration with Štyrský, she developed more experimental painting styles and the concept of artificialism. In many ways their work anticipated the post-war Art Informel movement. Objectivity returned to her work in 1930, and from this time on it can be classified as Surrealism. From 1945 onwards, elements of the collage increasingly appeared in her pictures. Toyen illustrated over 500 books between 1923 and 1950.

Toyen's works often deal with the themes of "sex, violence, nature, alchemy". She is considered "the most important artist of the Czech avant-garde and pioneering protagonist of French post-war Surrealism".

Exhibitions

literature

Web links

Commons : Toyen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Anabelle Görgen-Lammers: »Je ne suis pas peintre«; Kosmos Toyen , as well as Rebecca Herlemann: Toyen (short biography), both in: Ingird Pfeiffer (Hrsg.): Fantastische Frauen - Surreal Welten from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo , catalog for the exhibition in the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt), Hirner Verlag, Munich 2020 , ISBN 978-3-7774-3413-1 , pp. 197 - 202, and p. 398
  2. ↑ knerger.de: Toyen's grave
  3. ↑ Karla Tonine Huebner: Eroticism, Identity and Cultural Context: Toyen and the Prague Avant-Garde , Pittsburgh 2008, online, PDF (English) , p. 38
  4. ^ Website of the Hamburger Kunsthalle , accessed on March 15, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Toyen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Čermínová, Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech surrealism painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1980
Place of death Paris