Toyen: the unconventional surrealist rebel

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Toyen was unconventional in many ways – she left home at the age of 16 to work in a soap factory, moved to France, and hid the Jewish poet Jindřich Heisler in her flat during the war. She also rejected gender conformism, favouring a gender-neutral pseudonym over her birth name, referring to herself in Czech using masculine grammatical forms when speaking in the first person, and often dressing in masculine-style clothing.

Not only her life, but also her art was unconventional - she portrayed themes of violence and sexuality in her works at a time when this was very unusual for women, and joined several avant-garde artistic movements, including male-dominated surrealist groups.

Find out more about Toyen k in our series dedicated to Czech painters.

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Видео Toyen: the unconventional surrealist rebel канала Radio Prague International