Marie Čerminová Toyen

Marie Čermínová (1902 – 1980), was a Czech Transgender Artist mostly known as Toyen in the art world. Born in Smíchov, Bohemia, she lived much of her life in Paris. She left home at the age of 16 and worked at a soap factory in Zizkov while putting himself through school.

During her 60-year career she has created a huge body of work including paintings, drawings, collages, illustrations and a selection of book covers that she designed. She was also a prominent member of the surrealist art movement.

A prominent female member (even as a man) of the prewar Czech avant-garde, the painter Toyen had a richly various career that took him from Cubism, through the painterly abstraction of “Artificialism, “to an extended Surrealist period.

Toyen rejected his name (Marie Cerminova) and chose to pursue his career as an artist under an assumed name – a mysterious name without a gender.
He broke all links to his family in favour of several friends who were “bound by choice”. Toyen protested against bourgeois tendencies and endorsed the anarchist movement.
He disclaimed any suggestion that he play a traditional woman’s role by leading an independent way of life and, on the other hand, displaying no compromise for the quality of his work.

Toyen regarded painting as a natural need free of any ambition and painted whatever came into his mind, often to what would have been a shock had people known he was a woman.. Another great hint in the little-known complexity of the artist’s long career.

After his death in 1980, an exhibition of his work and of the collaboration with his Czech colleagues was shown at the Centre Pompidou, and in the following years, a number of important retrospectives were held.
[from:http://www.tresbohemes.com/2016/04/cz...]

Music: Chihei Hatakeyama "Ferrum"