Tag: Toyen

Discussion with Karla Huebner about her book on Toyen

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CRAACE is please to co-host this online event with Fulbright Czech Republic and Společnost pro queer paměť.

 On 11 May 2022 at 8 pm CET

Dr. Karla Huebner, author of Magnetic Woman:Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

will discuss this gender-ambiguous Czech surrealist artist, who was born Marie Čermínová (1902–1980). Toyen’s early life in Prague made it possible to become a force in three avant-garde groups – Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism – and also to emphasize erotic themes in many works of visual art. Dr. Huebner will focus on Toyen’s construction of gender and eroticism in relation to the artist’s historical context as a gender nonconforming person and probable sexual minority during the First Republic.

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Toyen: The Paradise of the Blacks, 1925

Artwork of the Month, March 2022: The Paradise of the Blacks by Toyen (1925)

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According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a negrophile is ‘someone (especially a white person) who is very sympathetic to or supportive of Black people, their culture, or their rights and interests.’[1] The levels of sympathy and support may, indeed, differ and be open to interpretation. Negrophilia, then, is the attraction to Black culture and Black people, often linked to the fascination of the interwar avant-garde with Africans and African Americans in European metropolises.[2] Between the wars, Black culture became a subject of inspiration, captivation but mostly exploitation by many writers, poets, painters, musicians, or dancers from Paris to Prague.

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Toyen: The Dreaming Rebel: Exhibition review

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One of interwar Czechoslovakia’s best-known younger artists, Toyen (1902–1980, born Marie Čermínová) had a long and productive career – first as a member of the interwar avant-garde Devětsil group, then as a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, and finally as a core member of André Breton’s Paris surrealist group. Through almost five decades and many stylistic shifts, Toyen forged a remarkable and unusual career, not least because of her important role as a woman central to, rather than peripheral to, three important creative groups. Works such as the moody and lyrical abstractions of her Artificialist period, and surrealist paintings such as Dream (1937) and Eclipse (1968), have assured Toyen’s significance in the contexts of both the Czech and the international avant-garde. In recent years, Toyen has also become a figure of interest for the international trans community, due to the artist’s gender-ambiguous self-styling.

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Devětsil 1920-1931: Exhibition review

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To many, the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 following the traumatic war experience promised a reorganisation of the unjust class system and social and class change became the dream of many leftist artists. Creating a new visual language that would not be elitist and appeal especially to the disadvantaged working classes was an idea promoted by many individuals and collectives from the foundation of the new state. The artistic association Devětsil was born on these principles in 1920. Its key representatives were the young men of Prague and, from 1923, of Brno, who engaged in various artistic forms: painting, sculpture, architecture, design, film, photography, literature, theatre. The choice of the name Devětsil is a mystery. The Czech word refers to a plant, a butterbar, while the literary translation of nine forces could suggest a connection with the nine Greek muses.

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