Time flies--čas letí--and my book on Toyen has been accepted for publication by University of Pittsburgh Press. We are calling it Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic and hope to see it in print this fall.
Toyen's work is increasingly well known, but there are still many people, even many art historians, who are unfamiliar with this artist, so don't feel ignorant if the name is new to you. Toyen (born Marie Čermínová, 1902-1980) joined the avant-garde Devětsil group in 1923 and in the 1930s became one of the founders of the Prague surrealist group. She worked in painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage, and had a long and interesting career, working in both Prague and Paris. My book particularly examines how her Prague context made it possible for her to become not just an artist, but a surrealist with a strong erotic bent--but the book also looks at her postwar French work.
Note: As Toyen used masculine-gendered speech in Czech, it's possible that today Toyen would have identified as transgender, but as Toyen's friends referred to her with feminine-gendered speech, and Toyen apparently did not use masculine forms in French, I think she had ample opportunity to state what she wanted, and so I follow her friends' practice.
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