If this is what came to Toyen in her dreams in postwar 1950s Paris, it's a big improvement over her nightmares of the late 30s and early 40s in Prague--as first the Nazis and then the Communist tanks rolled in...

Whatever these things are, they seem weird but not threatening--more colorful, softer, sensual.

At first glance it's a pure abstract. But as you adjust to the dim underwater nocturnal dream-light you start to see vaginas, clitorises, lips and tongues...

...and those blue things on the left.

Wait, are those really skeletal owl heads?

Maybe her dreams aren't as whole-heartedly postwar as they first seem...

--Chris Wayan--

SOURCE: Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic by Karla Huebner, 2020; pp. 271, 280, and in the mid-book color plates (unpaged), Plate 23.
DATE: Huebner dates the painting to 1957; some Web sources have 1956. I normally try to date the dream not the finished artwork, so even if Huebner's right...

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