Phantom object

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: private collection.

From the mid-1930s, Toyen often painted imaginary landscapes, most of which were desert. The period of romantic artificiality was replaced by surrealistic visions with real or fictional objects. A huge ball with a single eye, resembling a bird’s eye, clearly moved on rocky terrain and suddenly stopped, staring into the viewer’s eyes. Toyen’s thirst for the miraculous is an insatiable thirst for a new reality. Symbols and images of known and immobile objectivity are, in her opinion, “standing with their back to the future.” The composed reality, shown in this canvas, opens the future in its inexhaustible scale and diversity.