Author: Karla Huebner, Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 2021-08-08

Karla Huebner discusses her new book on the surrealist artist Toyen. 
Part art book and part biography, Magnetic Woman examines the life and work of the artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902–80), a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, and focuses on her construction of gender and eroticism. Toyen’s early life in Prague enabled her to become a force in three avant-garde groups—Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism—yet, unusually for a female artist of her generation, Toyen presented both her gender and sexuality as ambiguous and often emphasized erotic themes in her work.

Karla Huebner offers a re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde, along with a complex and nuanced view of women’s roles in and treatment by the surrealist movement.

Karla Huebner is a professor of Art History at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, whose research focuses on Czech modernism, feminism and gender, surrealism, and visual culture.