Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

At the end of 1945, Topič Salon housed an exhibition of Toyen's work from the Occupation period, when the Nazis had denounced Surrealist art as “degenerate” and showing it publicly had been impossible. This was her first exhibition without Jindřich Štyrský, who died prematurely in the spring of 1942. Toyen assembled 16 oil paintings from 1941–1945, along with 45 drawings, including the series Shooting Range (1939–1940) and Hide, War (1944), which were published in 1946 by Fr. Borový.

Jindřich Heisler wrote a poem Zase se střídají roční doby (The Seasons Change Again) for the catalogue. In his introductory text, Karel Teige assessed the cultural situation of the Occupation period from an artistic and ethical perspective. He criticized not only academic artists and makers of kitsch, but also artists who tried to balance their work on the line between the forbidden and the permissible in order to maintain their public activities. In contrast to these artists, Teige noted artists such as Toyen, who had refused to compromise. In Teige's view, Toyen's work over the previous decade was marked by an increasing tendency to portray imaginary ideas as concretely as possible. He believed that Toyen's works, precisely capturing the cruel and oppressive atmosphere of war, would retain their inner integrity even after the historical context had changed, an opinion he shared with Jan Mukařovský, whose opening speech was published in the journal Doba.

The opening was attended by representatives of Czech and French official circles – Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslav Stránský, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vlado Clementis, French cultural attaché Lacombe and military attaché General Julien Flipo. On December 19, President Eduard Beneš and his wife visited the exhibition, accompanied by Toyen, Teige and Mukařovský, who gave them a guided tour. Such official recognition, albeit reserved, contradicted the original Surrealist intentions, but the exceptional situation immediately after the end of a worldwide catastrophe altered the existing standards.

Despite all the respect Toyen garnered for her attitude during the war, reviewers' evaluation of her work depended to a great extent on their relationship to Surrealism, as well as their ability to accept her current style, characterized by Teige as “faithful representation of real objects in fantastic, unsuspected, exciting and explosive juxtapositions and relationships” [Teige 1947]. Toyen's approach was no longer guided by modernist principles. This may be why most reviewers shared admiration for her drawings but criticized the alleged lack of technical skill in her paintings, which included Dangerous Hour, After the Show and the first version of At the La Coste Chateau, today considered her best works.

Sympathy for Surrealism, combined with criticism of Toyen’s painterly execution, appeared in the reviews by Otakar Mrkvička, Štyrský's and Toyen's colleague in the group Devětsil, and Vladimír Šolta, Filla's student at the School of Applied Arts and later a prominent official of the communist regime. Jiří Kotalík, a member of Group 42 (Skupina 42) and a new art history student at Charles University, broadened his review of the exhibition to include a polemic with Teige's catalogue introduction, which, in Kotalík's view, rejected anything in contemporary art that was not Surrealism. Kotalík expressed his doubts concerning the concept of the inner model, which Teige applied to Toyen's work. For Kotalík, perfect craftsmanship was the necessary condition for any artwork in any style. Although he respected the “profoundly truthful representation of war” in Toyen's work and the “robust and original power of her imagination,” he was bothered by the “ostentatious disregard for artistic qualities” in her oil paintings [Kotalík 1945].

The experienced art critic František Kovárna evaluated Toyen's exhibition through the lens of his theory of contemporary art, into which Surrealism did not fit. He compared Surrealist paintings to a crossword puzzle, an experiment, during which the artist voluntarily retreats into isolation, abandoning visuality – the condition necessary for the work's impact on society. In his otherwise very positive review, Jiří Krejčí pointed to a danger hidden in veristic Surrealism. Although he fully appreciated Toyen's work, Krejčí was afraid that similar approaches might be misused in the wrong hands: “Let us not be so naive as to believe that the more mysterious its meaning and the more naturalistic its execution, the greater a painting is as a piece of art.” [Krejčí 1945]

Representing the younger Surrealist generation, the nineteen-year-old Mikuláš Medek expressed his view of the exhibition in the short-lived journal Student. Medek, who had just met Libor Fára and other Surrealists from the Spořilov group, praised Toyen's series of drawings and poetry illustrations as “products of truly pure and consistent Surrealism” but he thought her paintings lacked the movement’s “initial magnificent outburst” [Medek 1946]. Medek did not fully appreciate Toyen's wartime work until the early 1950s when, for a brief period, he explicitly followed her example in his own work.

The varied responses to the Toyen exhibition were part of a lively debate about Surrealism's situation after the Second World War. Of the original Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia, only Teige and Toyen still held the Surrealist position, but unlike Teige, Toyen was not particularly interested in collaborating with the younger generation (except for Jindřich Heisler). She found a new context for her work in Paris, where she exhibited an expanded version of the 1945 Topič show at the Denise René gallery in the summer of 1947 and where she joined Breton's group.

Lenka Bydžovská

Works Cited

Kotalík 1945: Kot [Jiří Kotalík], Nadreálné vidiny reálných hrůz, Práce I, 1945, no. 195, 28. 12., p. 3

Krejčí 1945: jk [Jiří Krejčí], Malířka Toyen, Právo lidu XLVIII, 1945, no. 187, 21. 12., p. 3

Medek 1946: ŠM [Mikuláš Medek], Toyen 1939–1945, Student II, 1945–1946, no. 4, 14. 1. 1946, p. 12, reprinted in: Mikuláš Medek, Texty, ed. Antonín Hartmann – Bohumír Mráz, Prague 1995, p. 74

Teige 1947: Karel Teige, Malířce Toyen…, Blok II, 1947–1948, no. 1, 10. 10. 1947, p. 30

Further Reading

Polana Bregantová, Topičův salon 1937–1949: katalogy výstav, in: Milan Pech (ed.), Topičův salon 1937–1949, Prague 2011, p. 190

Jan Mukařovský, Toyen za války (Proslov při zahájení výstavy Toyen v Praze), Doba I, 1946–1947, no. 2, 1946, pp. 46–48, reprinted in: idem, Studie z estetiky, Prague 1966, pp. 312–314

Milan Pech, Výstavní aktivity Topičova salonu, in: idem (ed.), Topičův salon 1937–1949, Prague 2011, pp. 103–104

Karel Srp, Toyen, Prague 2000, pp. 151–193

Karel Teige, Střelnice, in: Toyen, Střelnice, Prague 1946, pp. 3–6, reprinted in: Karel Teige, Osvobozování života a poezie. Studie ze čtyřicátých let, ed. Jiří Brabec – Vratislav Effenberger, Prague 1994, pp. 87–98 

jhč [Jaroslav Hlaváček], Válka v díle malířky Toyen, Rudé právo XXV, 1945, no. 192, 22. 12., p. 3

ms, Toyen v Topičově salonu, Svobodné noviny I, 1945, no. 160, 29. 11., p. 3

ok, Pan president na výstavě Toyen, Svobodné noviny I, 1945, no. 177, 20. 12., p. 4

Pchč. [Jaroslav Pecháček], Na okraj kulturních událostí. Pražské výstavy, Umění dneška III, 1945–1946, no. 3, May 1946, p. 178

Rudolf Rouček, Výstavy, Dílo XXXIV, 1945–1946, no. 4–5, 20. 3. 1946, p. 118

Š. J. [Štěpán Jež], Z pražských výstav, Lidová demokracie I, 1945, no. 181, 16. 12., p. 4

Karel Teige, Toyen (výňatky z katalogu současné výstavy u Topiče), Svět v obrazech II, 1946, no. 1, 11. 1., p. 7

vo [Václav Vodák], Obrazy a kresby Toyen, Pravda II, 1946, no. 2, 3. 1., p. 4

zh., Výstava surrealistické malířky, Čin I, 1945, no. 174, 1. 12., p. 4