A new exhibition of works by the painter Toyen awaits visitors
Updates: 04/08/2021 16:21
Released: 08.04.2021, 16:21
Prague – The National Gallery in Prague has prepared an extensive exhibition of works by the surrealist painter Toyen. It was established in cooperation with foreign institutions and was to start at the Wallenstein Riding School on Friday. In the meantime, however, the installed exhibition will wait until the mitigation of anti-epidemic measures will allow the exhibition to be opened to visitors. The exhibition is called Toyen: a dreaming rebel and according to NGP plans is to last until August 15.
Toyen is one of the most original and well-known Czech artists of the 20th century, and at the same time she became famous in France, where she has lived permanently since 1947. Her expressive work and unique attitudes arouse growing interest in her person and work all over the world. The author is one of the favorite authors of Czech collectors in the country, and her works at auctions are among the most expensive. Her exhibitions are also among the most visited, in 2000 she was seen in Prague by almost 67,000 people in three months.
Since then, the big Toyen exhibition has not taken place in Prague. Two years later, there was an exhibition of her works in Saint-Etienne, France. There has not yet been a great retrospective in Paris and Toyen is still almost unknown in Germany, according to the curators of the new exhibition. Therefore, this international project, created in collaboration with the National Gallery in Prague, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, aims to present its work in the most comprehensive form possible and to introduce it to European audiences through three exhibitions and a detailed catalog in four languages.
The Prague exhibition in the Wallenstein Riding School is designed chronologically and divided into time sections according to the important stages of Toyen’s work. At the same time, however, she highlights important topics that appear throughout her work, such as eroticism or alchemy. He will show not only paintings and drawings, but also rich illustration work. The authors also emphasized Toyen’s fundamental cooperation with friends from both the Prague and Paris surrealist groups, such as Jindřich Štyrský, Jindřich Heisler, André Breton and others.