Toyen, a queer perspective on surrealism

Toyens early abstract period 

Toyen was introduced to the Parisian art scene in the 1920s. Between 1924 and 1926, Toyen worked with Prague avant-garde artist Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942) in the European epicentre of the arts. Here they shaped their ‘artificialism’, a small-scale abstract movement that opposed early surrealism and tried to unite poetry with the visual arts. In their quest to express emotions such as melancholy, longing and anxiety, they experimented with different textures and techniques in oil on canvas. A photo card of Toyen’s painting Fumée de tabac (1927), from the archive of Theo and Nelly van Doesburg that the RKD houses, illustrates this early, abstract period of Toyen.  

Presumably, Theo van Doesburg received this card in the city itself, where he and Toyen had previously exhibited together at the exhibition L’Art d’Aujourd’hui (1925). Van Doesburg collected visual material from (international) artists in Paris to use in his articles or lectures. On Fumée de tabac (1927), looming smokescreens and lozenge patterns arise from Toyen’s use of splashing techniques, dripping and airbrush – methods that would only gain popularity in the 1950s and that Toyen interpreted in 1955 as the harbinger of lyrical abstraction and action painting: ‘To pursue a venture in common with a nonsurrealist painter is entirely possible if it is founded on the same basis as a common venture with a surrealist painter: the moral basis. I am convinced of this all the more resolutely as the term ‘lyrical abstraction’ accurately describes the painting that Styrsky and I started doing in 1926’, as Toyen stated in an interview translated into English, published in Penelope Rosemont's Surrealist Women: An International Anthology (1998). 

Surrealism in Prague and Paris 

From 1934, back in former Czechoslovakia, Toyen focused solely on surrealism as one of the founders of the movement in Prague, just after a visit by André Breton and Paul Eluard. For Toyen and Breton, this marked the start of a lifelong friendship and close collaboration. After a period that was characterised by sketches with phallic themes, humour and also an active role for women, Toyens style shifted to become more sombre in tone and politically engaged leading up to World War II, after which the Nazi’s censored the work. In order to escape post-war Stalinism, Toyen then fled to Paris where they settled permanently. Here, their style became more abstract again and would develop with more symbolism throughout the 1950s, also influenced by Bretons circle. Motifs of kissing animals, shadows, ghosts and ambiguous images evoking queer aspects of sexuality and femininity emerged more frequently, such as rags of cloth overflowing into vaginal forms and erotic tongues. 

A queer perspective on surrealism 

The RKD’s collection contains two photographs of works by Toyen from this period: Même si tout était écrit (1950), a largely undocumented piece, and L'origine de la vérité (1952). These paintings were mentioned in a 1953 letter from the Dutch-German writer and gallerist Niels Augustin (1928-2004). This letter, in the form of an unpublished article, offers an insight into a solo exhibition by Toyen at the gallery À l'Étoile Scellée. In Paris, Augustin was deeply impressed by Toyen’s work, which he found ‘more honest’ and ‘less commercial’ than Salvador Dali’s art. He expressed his admiration for what he considered Toyen’s ‘female sensitivity’. Toyen, however, played with societal gender roles and transgressed heteronormative conventions by cross-dressing and using a gender neutral pseudonym, which was possibly derived from the French word for citizen: citoyen. This identity play and resistance to the status quo continues to inspire LGBTQ people today who question ‘heteronormativity’: the assumption that heterosexuality is the universally preferred sexual orientation, and that traditional gender roles, ‘male’ and ‘female’, are a given. 

Augustins letter does not only provide insight into Toyens practice and work, but also forces us to think about artist identity, self-presentation and autonomy. Who actually determines how we read Toyens work and gender expression? And how does Toyen’s emotional life relate to outside interpretations? Indeed, although Toyen co-founded Prague surrealism in 1934 and was later recognised as a core member in Paris, little is known about their background. Biographical details are mostly shrouded in mystery. For instance, several stories exist about Toyen’s pseudonym and gendered self-references, probably because Toyen actively cultivated an ambiguous and fluid relationship to gender expectations. In Czech, the artist called themselves a malíř smutnej (‘sad, [male] artist’) and contemporaries interpreted the name ‘Toyen’ as a Czech pun on the neutral demonstrative pronoun. 

The impact of Toyen's oeuvre 

Toyen's work comprises a multifaceted exploration of gender and sexuality as artistic themes that continue to capture the imagination. It offers an alternative queer perspective on a predominantly male-dominated, heteronormative movement. Even well-known female artists like Leonora Carrington or Meret Oppenheim did not participate in international Surrealist exhibitions as often as Toyen, whose work also resonates strongly with LGBTQ experiences. In recent years, there has been more research into these queer aspects of Toyen's oeuvre. Yet Toyen's name recognition among the general public remains limited, apart from a major retrospective at Moderna Museet (Stockholm) in 1985 and in Prague in the year 2000. Only recently, in 2022, has interest been renewed with a travelling solo exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague, the Kunsthalle Deutschland in Hamburg and Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris.