Styrsky and Toyen and their artificialism ; affinities and divergences.
In Paris in 1926 the Czech painters Styrsky and Toyen founded a movement which they baptised « artificialism », setting out ...their objectives in a manifesto published in Prague in 1927 in the review ReD. This review was an emanation of the Devetsil group, founded in 1920, and bringing together poets and painters. According to the manifesto, art it an artifice and not a copy of reality ; it is based entirely on the imagination which is itself subordinated to remembered perceptions. The pictorial practices of Styrsky and Troyen were original. To begin with they were based on the use of stencils, objects being used as the stencils. Subsequently the materials employed developed, sand being mixed with the pigments, and so on.
The author gives a detailed study of the careers of the two artists between 1927 and 1931, both of them returning to Prague in 1929. The affinities of the 1920s are gradually replaced by creations of a more personal nature. Styrsky and Troyen did not join the surrealist movement until 1934.
Nethertheless, the author considers the year 1931 as marking the end of the practices and aesthetics of the artificialist movement. In 1932 both artists participated in the organisation at Prague of an International Exhibition where Breton’s surrealism was much to the fore.
