Toyen (born Marie Čermínová in 1902 in Prague; dead in Paris in 1980) is a word play on the Czech expression ‘to je on’ (‘it is he’). Toyen “refused to use the feminine endings when speaking in the first person” and used the masculine gender instead. Toyen, a runaway at 16, joined the Czech Avant-Garde at 20 and became a founding member of Artificialism, the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group, and the Devětsil group. She had to hide during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. After the war, she was able to flee to Paris before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, and stayed there until her death.

“To really see also means being blind in some ways, because there are visible landscapes and invisible ones”. Toyen