TOYEN (1902–1980), a founding member of the Czech Surrealist Group and a central figure within the Surrealist movement in Paris, has received significant critical reappraisal in recent years. This renewed attention has reaffirmed her position as one of the most extraordinary women artists of the Surrealist movement.

Born Marie Čermínová, the name Toyen was self-adopted in early adulthood as part of a conscious rejection of societal conventions. Embracing a gender-neutral identity, she dressed in working men’s clothes and used the masculine form in Czech language as means of identification. After a period in Paris, Toyen returned to Prague in 1928 and helped establish the city as a significant centre for Surrealist activity. Toyen was particularly supported by André Breton, and developed friendly relationships with Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí.
For Toyen, graphic arts represented a vital extension of both her imagination and politics - pursuing, through them, her lifelong search for freedom: political, sexual and artistic. Her early collaborations with Jindřich Štyrský in interwar Prague gave rise to a visual language charged with Surrealist eroticism and resistance. Her partnership with Jindřich Heisler sustained these same themes of trauma and resistance, and from 1938 onwards they produced some of the most important Surrealist statements against Fascism and oppression.

Toyen’s legacy was recently celebrated in a major touring retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2022), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2021–22), and the National Gallery in Prague (2021). Toyen's works were included in the group exhibitions Apparitions: Frottages and Rubbings from 1860 to Now, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015) and the solo exhibition Toyen - Surreal/ Radical at the Ludwig Museum Koblenz, Germany (2023). Toyen was also included in the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale - The Witch's Cradle - curated by Cecilia Alemani.