Certified graphic print, 47.7 x 66.5 cm. Numbered, certificate, BFK RIVES handmade paper. Signed lower right Toyen. Blind stamp: Solema s.p.a., Grafiart Edition.
About the author:
Toyen, real name Marie Čermínová, (1902 – 1980) was a Czech painter and graphic artist, one of the most significant figures of Czech surrealism – although she spent most of her life in Paris. She was a free and distinctive artist and woman in 20th-century Czech and world art. She defied societal conventions with her bohemian life, and her work stood against philistinism and hypocrisy in art and society. She refused to accept the prevailing notion of a woman's role and saw herself as equal to men, not only in her art but also in her personal life. Her work is characterized by originality and precise execution. Her lifelong friendship with the painter, writer, and photographer Jindřich Štyrský became very significant for her. Together they joined the avant-garde association of the young Czech generation, the Devětsil Art Union.
Toyen lived for her work; avant-garde art was a means for her to liberate herself from the conventions of life at the time. She was a free individual in her perception of sexuality, which she approached very openly and unusually. She began painting her erotic drawings and paintings in the second half of the 1920s, when Czech society considered such art to be decadent pornography.
