Marie Cerminova (born September 1902 – died November 1980)

Marie Cerminova was born on 21st of September 1902 in Prague . It seems that she was keen not to let us to know about her upbringing and early life. So we know little or nothing of what she was like as a girl; which schools she was educated at; who her parents were and where they all lived when Marie was young. We know she lived with her sister during the early years of her life, but we know nothing of other brothers and sisters.

When she was seventeen years old she started to study at Prague ’s School of Crafts and Design. Then, in 1922 she entered the world of art. That was the year her studies ended and she met her artistic soul-mate, Jiri Styrsky, while on holiday on the island of Korcula in Yugoslavia .

Together, they were soon accepted as members of an influential group called “Devetsil” (“Nine Forces”), formed Marie in 1920 by avant-gardes architects, painters, sculptors, collagist, film makers, designers and writers in the newly created Czech Republic . Her first exhibition was held at the Second exhibition of Devetsil in November-December 1923.Her seven works, painted in 1922-23 were shown there under her pseudonym of TOYEN.

There are many explanations for the origin of this name. It may have been from Citoyen without the first two letters. Or it could have been a play with a few of the letters of  the alphabet written down on a coffeehouse napkin by poet Jaroslav Seifert and rearranged shortly before her first exhibition, where she did not want to be exhibited under her own name. Nevertheless, the genderless name of Toyen was born and the name Marie Cerminova slowly disappeared into the unknown.

Toyen’s first trip of to the painter’s heaven, France , was undertaken at the end of 1924. She spent most of the time on the Cote d´Azur, where she probably formed her view of the country she would in the future be so much part off. Toyen’s creativity started to take her in many different directions. She liked designing dust jackets for Czech books together with Styrsky, but also experimented with different styles of painting such as primitivism which was soon to be replaced by a lyrical-abstractive way of expression. Later on, she and Styrsky started to call their Expressionism for Artificialism. Toyens first exhibition in France was as early as in December 1925 at an exhibition called L´Art d´aujourd´hui.

Toyen and Styrsky continued with painting, poetry, design and artistic proclamations until they met Andre Breton and Paul Eluard when these two giants of Surrealism visited the Czech Republic . Later, during their visits to Paris , Toyen and Styrsky were influenced by Max Ernst,  Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and Claude Cahun. When the first surrealist group outside France was founded in Prague in 1934, Toyen and Styrsky were the initiators. Toyen´s first exhibition with the Surrealists was at Galerie Aux Quatre Chemins in Paris in December 1935. Thus Toyen entered the European forum of Surrealistic Art. Her exhibitions were numerous, challenging and,if one looks at her pictures, breathtaking.

She exhibited in London and Prague in 1936; Prague , Tokyo and then Prague again in 1937; Paris , Prague , Amsterdam in 1938 and New York in 1939. At the second Prague Surrealist Exhibition in 1938, Toyen presented all her latest paintings.

These were difficult years, characterised by one of the participants as “one of the last manifestations of free spirit in art”. Exhibitions and the creative process of art gave the participants a final opportunity to criticize both Fascism and Stalinism at the same time. The conflict between avant-garde art production and the official ideology of the two totalitarian systems was exposed by l´enfant terrible of the Czech, modernist avant-gard, Karel Teige, who pointed out the similarities  between the Fascist criticism of enartade kunst and the Stalinist criticism of wicked formalism. It was at this time the left wing artists in the surrealist movement tried to dismantle the Surrealist group of Czech artist when pressured to do so by the Czech Communist Party.     

When the Czech Republic and its capital Prague were occupied by the Nazis on 15th of March 1939, Toyen responded with twelve pictures called Les Spectre du Désert .

The Second World War was a time of strife in occupied Prague . Toyen’s lifelong friend, creative inspiration and partner, Jindrich Styrsky, died in Mars 1942. At about this time she decided to hide a young poet, Jindrich Heisler, in her one room flat. Jindrich had decided not to turn himself in to the Germans who were rounding up non-Arians for transportation east.

Jindrich Heisler lived in Toyen´s bathroom for the entire war thus saving his life. Then Toyen turned forty, a fact that gave birth to the “Life starts at Forty” booklet produced as a samizdat by her Surrealist friends.

After the liberation, a month-long exhibition of Toyen’s works, produced during the previous five years, was held in Prague . The most famous of these paintings are Shooting Range and Go and hide you, war.

In 1947, due to rising political tension in the Czech Republic , Toyen decided to emigrate to France together with Jindrich Heisler. Both immediately became members of the Parisian Surrealist group which perhaps Toyen thought would help them adapt to a new life. Sadly though, life outside her beloved Prague was difficult for Toyen. 

Some of her closest friends among the Surrealists chose to support Stalin’s Communism and Toyen subsequently terminated the friendship with them.

On the other hand, the firm friendship she enjoyed with Benjamin Péret and André Breton gave her support. At the very beginning of 1953 Jindřich Heisle died at the age of 39 thus leaving Toyen alone once again.

Toyen now moved into the Hôtel de la Paix situated at Ile de Saint Louis for the next twenty years. Most of her contacts with the outside word were with Surrealists. In a photograph from the surrealist meeting at the

café at Place Blanche, one can see the concentrated, dark-eyed Toyen sitting in the same row as Man Ray, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, André Breton, and Benjamin Péret.

Her first personal exhibition, where she exhibited her work from the fifties, was at the surrealist Galerii à l´Etoile Scellée in May 1955. She was, however, also continuously involved in many others exhibitions to which she contributed new paintings or drawings. On the other hand, her work was seldom exhibited in her native country of Czechoslovakia during the forty long years of the Communist regime.

Shortly after the death of André Breton, Toyen moved from the Hôtel de la Paix into his old atelier at rue Fontaine. When the Paris surrealist group dissolved itself in 1969, Toyen went into seclusion, keeping contact with only a few close friends. At the end of her life Toyen turned her energy into making collages instead of paintings. 

Toyen died in November 1980. She is buried at the Batignolles cemetery in Paris where Jindřich Hessler, André Breton and Benjamin Péret are also buried.

Written by Dalibor Svoboda