TOYEN: Tir (Shooting Gallery)

1973

Radovan Ivšić: poem Sans Tympans, Sans Tambours [Without Timpani, Without Percussion]
Toyen: 2 black and white dry points (11/75, 27 × 27 cm), 2 coloured dry points (XI/XXV, 27 × 27 cm) and 12 drawings from the original 1946 Prague edition with a preface by Karel Teige and poems by Jindřich Heisler (loose sheets), cassette
Published by Éditions Maintenant, Paris, 1973
Edition: 575 copies, of which 95 copies in a cassette designed by Toyen, and with a poem by Radovan Ivšić, are numbered 1–75 and A–T, and of these: 25 copies numbered 1–25 include 2 dry points on Auvergne paper from the paper mill Richard-de-Bas and one set on Japanese pearl paper hand-coloured by the artist. Copies 1–10 on Japanese pearl paper in a full leather cassette include 12 drawings hand-coloured by Toyen. Copy No. 1 includes the manuscript, the second part in black on Japanese pearl paper, a drawing and two copperplates. Fifty copies are numbered 26–75 and each includes 2 dry points on paper Auvergne from the Richard-de-Bas paper mill and 20 copies marked A to T are reserved for the artist and the author. There were 25 proofs of each dry point separately printed and numbered H.C. 1–H.C. 25 (not for sale), on Auvergne paper from the Richard-de-Bas paper mill, and 25 proofs numbered E. A. 1–E. A. 25 on Japanese pearl paper reserved for the artist. Five hundred copies on de Rives vellum paper are numbered 76–575
The printing of this partially original edition was completed in Paris on 1 June 1973 by the typographer Georges Girard. The dry points were printed by the typographer Georges Leblanc. The cassettes were made by Nguyen Ba Anh at Cartonnages Adine
31,8 × 44 cm, unpaginated
Original cassette, signed Radovan Ivšić
Copy No. 11/75
Note: The graphic design of Radovan Ivšić's poem was prepared by Roland Sig
The book is in the form of loose sheets in hardcover and cassette

TOYEN-ČERMÍNOVÁ MARIE

From 1917 to 1922 she studied at the School of Applied Art in Prague in the studio of decorative painting headed by Professor Emanuel Dítě. From the outset she behaved as an exceptionally free woman and a radical one by the standards of the day. A crucial moment in Toyen’s career was her meeting with her future partner and closest friend, the painter Jindřich Štyrský. In 1923 she joined the Devětsil group and the Mánes artists’ association. In 1925 she and Jindřich Štyrský left together for Paris, where they would soon present their own artistic movement that they called Artificialism. The movement oscillated between abstraction and Surrealism and was also inspired by Imaginative Art. On her return from France in 1934 she and Štyrský established the Surrealist Group. She spent the war years in Prague and was forced to work underground with no opportunity to exhibit. After the war she left Czechoslovakia before the Communist dictatorship was established and settled for good in Paris. She continued to associated with the foremost representatives of Surrealism André Breton and Benjamin Péret and she continued to create in the spirit of late Surrealism until the 1970s.