The most expensive Czech woman painter Toyen on a postage stamp
Sberatel.info
14. December, 2023
The Czech Post is paying tribute to a prominent figure of the Czech avant-garde and the most expensive Czech woman painter on postage stamps.
The motif chosen for the commemorative postage stamp, graphically designed by artist Otakar Karlas, dedicated to the Czech painter Maria Čermínová (1902, Prague – 1980, Paris), who worked under the name “Toyen“, is the famous painting “After the performance” from 1943.
It depicts a woman exercising on a pole, head down, wearing a short white skirt that covers her entire head. “The scene reminds some of an inverted crucifixion, others of a paradoxically non-committal play. The painting’s distressing and ambiguous impact is almost certainly related to the time of its creation – the war year 1943,” writes the Czech Post in the accompanying text to the stamp.
Toyen’s paintings are now fetching record prices at auction. In 2021, her painting Circus (pictured) sold for approximately EUR 3,200,000.
Toyen’s work was last auctioned in Prague this November. A painting of Monte Carlo from 1926 in its original frame was auctioned for approx. 2,600,000 Euros. The starting price was EUR 720,000.
The motif of the FDC is the painting “Fata morgana” from 1926, where, as the Czech Post writes in its press materials, “the transition from cubist compositional forms to artificialism is strongly manifested”.
In both cases, the printing was done in full-colour offset, the printing sheets carry 4 stamps in a total edition of 48,000. FDCs were digitally printed for a total of 2,300.
The Toyen stamp, like other stamps of the Czech Post, will be on sale at its stand at the International Fair Sberatel, 6-7 September 2024, Prague.
JJ using Czech Post print materials, photo: Czech Post
COLLECTORS’ AUCTIONS
