Toyen (Marie Čermínová)

About

Toyen, born Marie Čermínová in Prague on September 21, 1902, was a pioneering Czech painter, drafter, and illustrator renowned as a founder of the Czech Surrealist Group. Adopting the gender-neutral pseudonym 'Toyen' around 1922-1923, derived possibly from the French 'citoyen' (citizen) or Czech 'To je on' (It is he), she rejected traditional gender norms, dressing in men's clothing and using masculine forms in Czech. She studied decorative arts at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague from 1919-1922 without graduating, where she met lifelong collaborator Jindřich Štyrský. Together, they moved to Paris in the early 1920s, developing Artificialism—a poetic, abstract style blending painting and poetry as an alternative to Surrealism and Abstraction—before returning to Prague in 1928. Joining the Devětsil group in 1923 and co-founding the Czech Surrealist Group in 1934, Toyen's work evolved from Cubist influences to surrealist explorations of eroticism, dreams, politics, and childhood innocence amid oppression.

Surrealism with queer, erotic, and political themes; earlier Artificialism and Cubist influences