Toyen (Marie Cerminova) - Factory 1920–1922, oil on canvas, 25 x 31,5 cm Provenance: - private collection of Toyen (located in the collection until her death in 1980) - Auctioned from Toyen’s own collection (estate of Toyen, Vincent F. Wapler, 21 June 1982, no. c. 8) – First owner of the work: Swiss collector Jean-Paul Jungo Exhibited: - Toyen, Stone Bell House, Prague City Gallery, 12. 05 –06. 08. 2000 – Toyen, Musée d’art moderne, St. Etienne, 28. 06.–30. 09. 2002 - Toyen, Galerie Les Yeux fertinels, 15. 10.–11. 12. 2004 Publicated: - Karel Srp, Toyen, Prague 2000, p. 17, fig. no. 2 - Karel Srp, Toyen, une femme surrealiste, Artha St. Etienne 2002, p. 40, fig. no. 3 - Toyen, Klovićevi Dvori Gallery, Zagreb, 03. 04.–19. 05. 2002, full-page reproduction p. 69 – Toyen, Galerie Les Yeux fertinels, 15. 10.–11. 12. 2004, p. 7, fig. no. 2 The painting was given a large part in the recent feature-length documentary film by director Andrea Sedlackova, entitled Toyen – Baroness of Surrealism. Expertise by the recognized authority Dr Karel Srp, author of a monograph on the artist and curator of many Toyen exhibitions at home and abroad. Dr Srp’s remarked on Factory: “Although Toyen is usually associated with the proletarian quarter of Zizkov, based on Jaroslav Seifert's memoirs, one of the first paintings we have of her depicts a different district to which she had a greater connection: Smichov, where she was born in Vltavska Street, where her parents bought a house on what is now Kovaku Street in 1908, and where, after returning from Korcula in the autumn of 1922, she was reported to the police in her sister's flat near the Smichov rail station, where her husband had a service apartment. The painting is a tightly constructed suburban scene, with what is probably one of Smichov's factories in the foreground (very likely the Ringhoffer machine works), and behind it a row of rear facades of tenement houses. We can assume that these were subjects that Toyen knew well and had observed. The simple three-dimensional, geometrically low horizontal factory buildings in the foreground, followed by a group of four vertical chimneys, terminate in a row of tenements on the left preceding the factory buildings on the right. This spatially bounded whole allows for the entry of color, giving the image its own unique mood and charm, bounded by a grey diagonal road in the foreground and grey roofs on the horizon, spanned with electrical power lines, with a light grey empty sky beyond. All the colourful action is concentrated between the grey surfaces: yellows, pinks, reds, browns illuminating the whole picture, which is one of the earliest works we have from Toyen. Its dating is a question: it is usually given as early as 1920, but perhaps one might consider, in view of Styrsky's work from 1922, whether the painting is more likely to date from that year, which would be consistent with the simplification of the volumes and their planar layout, from which the space is still being built. The painting is extremely important in terms of Toyen's early work, since we know mostly of works from Yugoslavia, but not of the Prague scene in general. It is a great example of her early work. “ Consulted with Dr Irena Zantovska Murray HonFRIBA, Professor Jaromir Zemina, Dr Jiri Machalicky and Vladimir Lekes.