Rêves… Mon chemin est lointain, l’appel est vain…

Details

Jindrich Štyrský (1899-1942)
Rêves… Mon chemin est lointain, l’appel est vain…
signed and dated 'Štyrsky 1935' (lower right)
oil on canvas
9 3/8 x 5¼ in. (23.9 x 13.2 cm.)
Painted in 1935

Provenance

Succession Marie Cermínová Toyen sale, Paris, 21 June 1982, Lot 136.
Private collection, Geneva, by whom acquired at the above sale.

Exhibited

Paris, Musée nationale d’art moderne, Štyrský, Toyen, Heisler, 1982 (illustrated p. 17).
Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, La Femme et le surréalisme, 21 November 1987 - 28 February 1988 (illustrated p. 541).
Genèva, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, La vie dans les plis (I et II), 6 June 2012 - 20 January 2013.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Štyrský and Toyen were seminal figures within the Czechoslovakian Avant-garde, exhibiting earlier on with the Devetsil group and establishing Artificialism in the late 1920s. Together with nine other participants, Štyrský and Toyen were founding members of the Czechoslovakian Surrealist group which was established in Prague on 21st March 1934.

The following year, in 1935 when Rêves was created, André Breton’s visit to Czechoslovakia, as well as Štyrský and Toyens’ visit to Paris at Breton’s invitation, marked a time of cross influence between the two countries and their Surrealist groups, allowing new collaborations to occur. Štyrský also was struck during this year with a serious illness which found him in another state of consciousness, between life and death. This he came to use this as a strong influence in his work, in line with the dominant ideas of Surrealism and its investigation of dreams and altered states of mind which may be seen strongly among the various juxtapositions within this composition.

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