Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902–1980), one of the most important European artists of the last century, devoted her entire life to books in addition to painting. She designed book covers, bindings and illustrations for various publishers in Prague and Paris. Although famous for her paintings, her artistic contribution and significance is much broader. In parallel with these paintings, she produced an extensive work related to books which already attracted attention in the interwar period and continued after 1947, when she moved to France for political reasons. She spent the next part of her life there. She immediately became a member of the Paris Surrealist group, of which fate she shared alongside her pre-war friends André Breton and Benjamin Péret. In her new home, her relationship with books changed considerably. She ceased to see it as a possible source of livelihood. She mainly concentrated on book covers and illustrations for her friends' poetry collections and theoretical reflections, often published as fine press books in small print runs. She saw these artworks as a natural part of her own work, parallel to the paintings she had the opportunity to present in several solo exhibitions in important private galleries in Paris.
The exhibition is held in conjunction with the Zdeněk Sklenář Gallery. It presents a collection of books created by Toyen during her time in Paris, acquired by the Gallery of Fine Arts in 2023 thanks to financial support from the Moravian-Silesian Region.

Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava