Toyen - Summer, Horror | Highlights from the NGP

Marie Čermínová, who worked under the artistic name Toyen, lived from 1902 to 1980. She was a Czech painter and illustrator, a representative of European Surrealism, who lived a large part of her life in France.

Surrealism was an art movement of the first half of the 20th century that significantly influenced not only the fine arts, but also literature, theatre, music and photography. Artists who worked in the Surrealist style include Max Ernst, Salvator Dalí, René Magritte, and photographer Man Ray. Surrealism originated in Paris in the 1920s and later found response among artists all around the world. This art movement puts an emphasis on the liberation of the mind. It tries to capture the subconscious, memories, ideas, and dreams.

In 1925, Toyen left for Paris together with her companion Jindřich Štyrský. In Paris they declared their own art movement – Artificialism. It could be characterised as a trend verging on Surrealism and Abstraction. The artists tried to capture the traces of their memories – ideas linked either to reality or to dreams – and especially their essence left behind. This process gave birth to new worlds – to unknown and unfamiliar landscapes. Such images evoke associations and stir up the viewer’s fantasy. In the beginning of the 1930s, the ideas of Surrealism began emerging in Toyen’s work.

However, this painting Summer from 1931 still reflects the concept of a landscape based on Artificialism. The left part of the canvas is dominated by ochre colours. There is an indeterminate object, suggestive of a mineral. There are also spherical shapes – perhaps eyes observing us. A crevice and, on the right, in the blue part, there are more unspecified objects, perhaps shells or rocks...

It is up to the viewer to interpret these shapes. The painting shows clusters of sensed and unknown objects floating freely in a weightless space. It may be a memory of the sea and sunlit sand. But what we can say for sure is that this painting has a very positive effect, evoking the connotation of a beautiful summer day.

The painting Horror from 1937 realistically depicts the irrational. The artist gives a concrete shape to her inner feelings. The scene is dominated by this indeterminate object. It is neither an object, nor a being – it is a kind of phantom. Its concrete shape and, at the same time, its unidentifiable nature have a very unsettling effect on us. At the end of the pole there is a bleeding object covered with feathers and casting a shadow. The background is rendered in an abstract manner suggesting a wooden structure that evokes a high fence. Two pairs of hands, perhaps children’s, plus one odd hand, hang onto it. The painting is crowned with a narrow strip of blue sky. The scene resonates with tension, a disturbing mixture of feelings of voyeurism, cruelty, and pleasure. Anxiety and danger are typical themes for Toyen’s work in the second half of the 1930s. The artist thus responded to the fears of the imminent World War II. Toyen spent the war years in Prague, hiding the poet and writer of Jewish origin, Jindřich Heisler in her small apartment. If this had been revealed it would have meant immediate death for both of them. After the war Toyen decided to travel to Paris where she spent the rest of her life.