Wright State University CORE Scholar Art and Art History Faculty Publications Art and Art History Spring 2010 Fire Smoulders in the Veins: Toyen's Queer Desire and Its Roots in Prague Surrealism Karla Huebner Wright State University - Main Campus,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/art Repository Citation Huebner, K. (2010). Fire Smoulders in the Veins: Toyen's Queer Desire and Its Roots in Prague Surrealism. Papers of Surrealism (8), 1-22. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/art/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Art and Art History at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art and Art History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. © Karla Huebner, 2010 Fire Smoulders in the Veins: Toyen's Queer Desire and Its Roots in Prague Surrealism Karla Huebner Abstract This essay explores Toyen's development of queer themes and places it in the context of her Prague origins. It first looks at its place within the Prague group's early erotica, then considers early Czech surrealism in relation to interwar Czech sex reformism, feminism, and homoerotic activism, and finally examines how Toyen 's production of artworks can be seen as enacting her queer desire in a tangible form . In closing , it relates Czech surrealist theory and practice to French surrealist ideas. The article also shows how inter-war Czechs participated in the struggle for sexual minority rights. Toyen 's entire oeuvre aims at nothing less than the correction of the exterior world in terms of a desire that feeds upon and grows from its own satisfaction.