"I see for it is night": Toyen in Prague

Toyen: I see for it is night is an exhibition held at Museum Kampa, the Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation in corporation with the Central and Eastern European Art Foundation. It will be shown from September the 5th 2015 through February the 16th 2016 in Prague.

Visitor at Museum Kampa, photo by ČTK, courtesy of the museum.

Toyen, originally named Marie Čermínová, (Prague 1902 – Paris 1980) is probably the most mysterious persona of last century European art. There are hardly any entirely reliable memories that would give insight into her life. Almost as if she intended them to fade, while leaving something beautiful behind: her art.

A unique exhibition on the most prominent and influential Czech artist, Toyen was organized by the Museum Kampa, in Prague, to celebrate the 96th birthday of Meda Mládková, the founder of the museum and one of the few still living persons who had the chance to meet the artist during the 1950s. Toyen’s best pieces from her surrealistic period in Prague and her post-war stay in Paris were provided by public and private collections for this occasion.

Toyen’s paintings evoke emotions. They provoke, they tell stories; yet they stay as mysterious as their creator. Inverted relations between figurative and abstract forms and lonely, almost endlessly wide-reaching scenes are recurrent motives of her surrealistic period during the 1930s and 1940s in Prague. In her paintings, Toyen creates a world full of opposites: pleasure and anxiety, beauty and ugliness. In a truly authentic way, she captures moments of melancholy, transience and sentiment.

Spící (Sleeping), 1937, courtesy of the museum

Sleeping (1937), Toyen’s probably most prestigious painting, is the main attraction of the exhibition. The artwork appears beautiful and scary at the same time. It evokes a feeling of dark romanticism while completely volatizing the present moment.

Toyen’s post-war art in Paris embodies the night time. She discovers toxic colours. Silhouettes of bodies that gradually fade into the darkness become her favoured motives, reminding heroes of a roman noir. With her art, Toyen inspired poets like Rudolf Fabry: "Oh, sharp green resembling death/ I see for it is night/ late night allowing me to own things/ that are not and will not be/that were not and yet they are/ they are where there is nothing" (Rudolf Fabry, Já je nekdo jiný (I is Someone Else), Mladá Fronta, Prague 1971).

Eclipse, 1968, courtesy of the museum

All Toyen’s art contradicts linear fashion and seems as if ‘It’s all on the edge. On the edge of thinking, on the edge of the abyss, on the edge of the void’ (Karel Srp, Toyen, Argo, Prague 2000).

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