The painting Toyen Mirage was sold at today’s auction in Prague for 31.2 million crowns
Update: 4/12/2022 6:49 p.m
Issued by: 4/12/2022, 5:38 p.m
Prague – Painting by the painter Toyen Mirage (Prelud) from 1967 was sold at today’s auction in Prague for 31.2 million crowns, including the auction markup. Its starting price was 12 million crowns. It became the second most expensive painting of Czech post-war art sold at auction in the Czech Republic after 1989. Kateřina Sokolová from the organizing auction house Adolf Loos Apartment & Gallery told ČTK. This record is held by Oskar Kokoschka’s painting The Frog from 1968, which was sold in 2016 for 37.7 million crowns. The most expensive Toyen work sold at a domestic auction remains the painting Circus, for which the new owner paid the final price of 79.56 million crowns last year.
After today’s auction, the impressionist oil of the important Austrian painter Maria Egnerová Bright Spring Morning from the end of the 19th century also has a new owner. It was sold for 5.6 million crowns, while it started with an amount one million less. An oil by Otakar Kubín called View of the garden from the artist’s studio “Bouda” from the early period of the artist’s work was sold for 7.6 million crowns, Sokolová said. The starting price was four million crowns.
“Ladislav Šíma’s painting Man with a stick, which had an asking price of 75,000 CZK, rose to an incredible 2,240,000 CZK. This is a new world auction record for the author,” added Sokolová.
The central motif of the painting Mirage is a ghostly beast, whose significantly illuminated face stares at the viewer. Behind the feline there is a motif of a predator, and Toyen also plays into the picture with two cast shadows of female figures in skirts falling on them from the sides.
Toyen’s highly collectible oil has remained in a private collection for a long time and has so far escaped greater public attention. According to the auction organizers, this is one of Toyen’s most important oils from her post-war period. It was auctioned for the first time.
Circus by Toyen is in third place in the ranking of the most expensive paintings sold at auctions in the Czech Republic, led by Bohumila Kubišta’s Old Prague motif from 1911. At the end of May, it was sold at an auction in Prague for 123.6 million crowns, including a 20 percent auction markup. He thus created a new domestic auction record. It surpassed František Kupka’s Divertimento II, which sold for 90.24 million crowns in 2020.
There is traditionally great interest in Toyen’s works among fine art collectors. For example, in May of this year, her painting The Recluse from 1934 was sold at auction for 54 million crowns, including mark-up.
Toyen (1902 to 1980), real name Marie Čermínová, is, according to experts, one of the most remarkable personalities of Czech and European visual arts of the 20th century. Between 1925 and 1929, she worked in Paris, where, together with Jindřich Štyrský, she developed the original Czech painting direction – artificialism, which represented a unique and poetic alternative to the geometric abstraction and surrealism of the time. Toyen finally returned to the metropolis above the Seine in 1947 and remained loyal to the surrealist movement. In her work she also reflected on war disasters, the theme of eroticism pervades her entire work.