Toyen was a surrealist who based much of her art on dreams. Most of the dream paintings are nightmarish. But she had a lighter side--she drew a lot of rather playful erotica. She told her friend Annie Le Brun that she'd been making erotic sketches as far back as she could remember. Here she combined her two interests: both dream art and sex. A dreaming girl, and what she dreams about.

Is this Toyen? Only one side. Her nondream erotica's full of penises, yes, but vaginas, lesbianism, and bestiality too; she seems to have been pretty broadly pansexual. The one constant is they all seem to be having fun. That in itself is pretty revolutionary, then and now.

Her best friend Jindrich Styrsky published a black & white version of "Dreamer" (titled "Snici Divka" (Dreaming Girl), with different fabrics and penis balloons) in his Erotic Review in 1931. This color version is a reworking; it's one of a 21-card set ("Jednadvacet"), made for a wedding present (!) in 1938.

SOURCE: Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic by Karla Huebner, 2020, pp. 9, 134, 148; and Annie Le Brun's "Toyen ou l'insurrection lyrique", in Nouvelle revue française #559 (Oct.2001): 136n2.

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