Toyen facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Toyen
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Toyen in 1930
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Marie Čermínová
21 September 1902 Prague, Austria-Hungary
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| Died | 9 November 1980 (aged 78) Paris, France
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| Resting place | Batignolles Cemetery, Paris, France |
| Nationality | Austro-Hungarian |
| Education | Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague |
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| Partner(s) | Jindřich Štyrský |
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Toyen (born Marie Čermínová; 21 September 1902 – 9 November 1980), was a Czech painter, drafter, and illustrator and a member of the surrealist movement.
In 1923, the artist adopted the professional pseudonym Toyen. The name Toyen has been suggested to be derived from the French word 'citoyen,' meaning citizen, but it has also been proposed to be a play on the Czech expression ‘to je on’ (‘it is he’). Toyen favored the gender-neutral name and would speak Czech in the masculine singular form. Vítězslav Nezval wrote that Toyen "refused... to use the feminine endings" when speaking in the first person.
Biography
Toyen left the family home at sixteen, and it has been speculated it was due to sympathy towards anarchism.
In the early 1920s, Toyen resided in Smichov with their older sister, Zdena Svobodova, whose husband worked for the railroad. Though the artist presented themself as a lone wolf, family was located nearby and they could visit with their mother whenever they wished, though visits were scarce. In 1940, Toyen and their sister each inherited split custody of their mother’s home until Zdena’s death in 1945, then the property became divided between Toyen and the widower.
From 1919 to 1920, Toyen attended UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design) in Prague to study the decorative arts. They worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský until Štyrský's death.
Toyen joined the Czech avant-garde Devětsil group in 1923 and exhibited with them. The group had strong international connections, especially but not only to French culture. Some of the other members of this very large group included: artist and writer Jindřich Štyrský, future Nobel prizewinning poet Jaroslav Seifert, the constructivist architectural theorist Karel Teige, and the poet František Halas. In the early 1920s Toyen traveled to Paris, and soon returned there with Štyrský to live. While living in Paris, the two founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism. Artificialism was defined by Toyen and Štyrský in a leaflet for an exhibition as "The identification of the painter with the poet," where the artist creates poetry without using language. The two would return to Prague in 1928.
Toyen's output of over 500 illustrated books includes, for example, The Purple Land by W. H. Hudson and Charles Vildrac's L'lle rose, both from 1930.
After their associates Vítězslav Nezval and Jindřich Honzl met André Breton in Paris, in March 1934 Toyen and Štyrský joined them in founding the Czech Surrealist Group along with other artists, writers, and the composer Jaroslav Ježek.
Forced underground during the Nazi occupation and Second World War, Toyen sheltered their second artistic partner, Jindřich Heisler, a poet of Jewish descent who had joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1938. The two permanently relocated to Paris in 1947, before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, and joined the Parisian Surrealists. In Paris, Toyen worked with André Breton, Benjamin Péret and other surrealists such as Annie Le Brun. Toyen would continue to collaborate with surrealist-affiliated poets and other writers but soon ceased working for commercial publishers in Czechoslovakia.
Posthumous Recognition
Asteroid (4691) Toyen is named in their honor.
See also
In Spanish: Toyen para niños
