Toyen (born Marie Čermínová; 21 September 1902 – 9 November 1980), was a Czech painter, drafter, and illustrator and a member of the surrealist movement. In 1923, the artist adopted the professional pseudonym Toyen. The name Toyen has been suggested to be derived from the French word 'citoyen,' meaning citizen, but it has also been proposed to be a play on the Czech expression ‘to je on’ (‘it is he’). Toyen favored the gender-neutral name and would speak Czech in the masculine singular form. Vítězslav Nezval wrote that Toyen "refused... to use the feminine endings" when speaking in the first person. Biography Toyen left the family home at sixteen, and it has been speculated it was due to sympathy towards anarchism. In the early 1920s, Toyen resided in Smichov with their older sister, Zdena Svobodova, whose husband worked for the railroad. Though the artist presented themselves as a lone wolf, family was located nearby and they could visit with their mother whenever they wished, though visits were scarce. In 1940, Toyen and their sister each inherited split custody of their mother’s home until Zdena’s death in 1945, then the property became divided between Toyen and the widower. From 1919 to 1920, Toyen attended UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design) in Prague to study the decorative arts. They worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský until Štyrský's death. Toyen joined the Czech avant-garde Devětsil group in 1923 and exhibited with them. The group had strong international connections, especially but not only to French culture. Some of the other members of this very large group included: artist and writer Jindřich Štyrský, future Nobel prizewinning poet Jaroslav Seifert, the constructivist architectural theorist Karel Teige, and the poet František Halas. In the early 1920s Toyen traveled to Paris, and soon returned there with Štyrský to live. While living in Paris, the two founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism. Artificialism was defined by Toyen and Štyrský in a leaflet for an exhibition as "The identification of the painter with the poet," where the artist creates poetry without using language. The two would return to Prague in 1928. Toyen's sketches, book illustrations, and paintings were frequently erotic. They had an interest in erotic humor, combining themes of both pleasure and pain. Their imagery often featured disembodied female figures as well as parts of male bodies like