Mythe de la lumière

Toyen, an abbreviation of the French word citoyen, citizen, was born in Prague as Marie Cerminová. In the 1930s, she met the surrealist pioneer André Breton and exhibited together with other surrealists in Paris. On returning to Czechoslovakia, she formed a surrealist group there. During the German occupation, she was prohibited from showing her work but secretly published collages and drawings in which she expressed her hatred of censorship. Toyen hid her friend, the poet Jindrich Heisler, who was Jewish, in her home during the war. In this painting, a shadow in profile holding out a plant appears against one half of a double door. On the other half, white-gloved hands form the shadow image of a barking dog’s head. The threat against someone’s precarious existence is portrayed with the dream-like logic of collage.