Toyen 1902–1980

Sur le Champs, 1967

copy K/T, published by Annie Le Brun 1967, 3 pcs. drypoint, 6 pcs. collages, complete bibliophilia in original dustjacket, very good condition, minor damage to the cover, 30 × 23 cm, signed 3 × PD Toyen, LD K/T, 6 × D in print Toyen 67, signed. annie le brun
Toyen, Sur le Champs, 1967 published by Annie Le Brun, 3 drypoint, 6 collages, complete bibliophilia Toyen's rare bibliophilia entitled Sur le Champs was produced in Paris in 1967 in a surrealist edition. Toyen permanently moved to Paris in 1947 in the post-war period, shortly before the Communist takeover, and remained there until her death in 1980. Here, she built on the pre-war contacts she had made with Jindřich Štýrský in the circle of Parisian surrealists, especially André Breton and Benjamin Perret. She continued her painting work there, but increasingly devoted herself to collage, especially the specific blending of collage and painting. In the second half of the 1960s, it is no longer possible to distinguish between the artist's important paintings, illustrations, collages and book adaptations, which become equivalent in this period, part of the artist's common pictorial and visual language. After Breton's death, Toyen became closely acquainted with the poet Annie Le Brun and the writer and poet Radovan Ivšic and established a long-term collaboration with them. Especially in 1967–68, Toyen and Annie Le Brun's work was closely linked, in which they responded to each other's combination of collage or drawing with text as one complementary expression. Mutual discussions and encounters led to the creation of a series of unique bibliophilias, published by Radovan Ivšic in perfect execution, from the choice of paper, format, cover, typography, as a form of sovereign artworks. The bibliophilia Sur le Champs (1967) was the first collaboration between Toyen and Annie Le Brun, followed by a number of others, sometimes difficult to trace, publications. An important link between Toyen and Annie Le Brun was their interest in the work of the Marquis de Sade and its critical interpretation. Toyen had already produced erotic illustrations for de Sade's Justine or the Curse of Virtue (Edition 69, 1932) in the 1930s, while Annie Le Brun wrote the complete preface to de Sade's works. The work Sur le Champs makes explicit reference to desire, which runs throughout the work. In it, the author addresses both the specific lover and the reader, who is constantly challenged and projected into a literary space where an atmosphere of revolt, polemic and chaos reigns, and where social norms and conventions crumble. Desire here overrides reason or rationality and becomes a place where passion, love, ecstasy, pain and wildness mix. It refers directly to Sade's principle of pleasure and the notion of sadism, where instincts take the lead, while opening up the theme of the absurdity of human existence. Sur le Champs touches on all moments of the surrealist imagination, with themes of language, wordplay, desire and eroticism, the future, revolt and the absurdity of existence. Toyen here, more than ever before, has combined the motif of pleasure and cruelty or pain in her collages, for example, in connections where sharpness contrasts with delicacy, but also in the intermingling of human and animal or object fragments. These include, for example, a razor blade in the middle of a budding flower, or a bat biting into a girl's calf from behind. These subjects Toyen used to highlight the text's contradictions and ambivalence in experiencing repressed or unacknowledged desire through visual means, breaking down social taboos. Together