Jindřich Štyrský

Toyen
Private collection (acquired from the above)
Ivan Bonnefoy (acquired from the above)
Galerie 1900-2000 (Marcel Fleiss)
Ubu Gallery, New York
Purchased from the above in July 2004

Prague, Dům U Kamenného zvonu (Stone Bell House), Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942), 2007
Houston, Cullen Collection, 2011, no. 64, illustrated in the catalogue
Houston, MFAH, Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage, 2012
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, El Surrealismo y el Sueño (Surrealism and the Dream), 2013-14, no. 122, illustrated in the catalogue

Lenka Bydžovská & Karel Srp, Jindřich Štyrský, Prague, 2007, p. 235, no. 313, illustrated; p. 238, cited; p. 518, cited

Not laid down, the top edge only is attached to a backing sheet which is signed, dated and inscribed by the artist. Apart from a small circa 1cm tear near the centre of the right edge of the collage, a small loss in the far upper-left corner and a number of old scattered creases and light surface abrasions (visible in the catalogue illustration and most probably original to the work) this work is overall in good original condition. Presented framed and glazed.
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Executed in 1933, the present work is the ninth in a total of ten collages used to illustrate Štyrský’s short story Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream, published the same year in the periodical Edition 69. The story expresses the artist’s fascination with sex and death. Due to its erotic content, Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream was deliberately published in a small edition to elude censors.

In the publication flyer for Edition 69, Štyrský offered some instructions for interpreting the material: 'The sister of eroticism is the inadvertent smile, the impression of the comic or the quiver of horror. The sister of pornography, however, is always only shame, the impression of disgrace and disgust. Some of these powerfully erotic photomontage compositions will bring a smile to your lips, the rest will elicit a feeling of horror. This erotic cycle, the core of which is the supreme moment of bliss, was inspired by a story that was once related to the artist and for a long while haunted his dreams. This attempt at iconoclasm provided the only escape from that confusion - with scissors one can separate even the most enduring pair. Male from female, sun from sky, death from the living, dream from life.' (quoted in Houston, Cullen Collection, p. 127).  

As well as being illustrated by ten of his most explicit and daring photo-montages, Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream was also accompanied by a psychoanalytical interpretation by Bohuslav Brouk. By that time, dreams had become an important source of inspiration for Štyrský, who regularly recorded his own dreams through writing and drawings. Like many surrealists Štyrský was fascinated by exploring the subconscious. Dreams gave access to a hidden realm of the mind, and Surrealist art often sought to capture extraordinary images originating from dreams or dreamlike states. 

For Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream Štyrský used cutouts from magazines overlaid with actual photographs to create surreal collages which combined the mundane with morbid, macabre or sexually explicit images to great effect. These disturbing yet playful juxtapositions were deliberately courting controversy as Štyrský believed that pornography could be a destabilising medium that could subvert established social and artistic norms. Viewed in this way, Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream became a pioneering body of Surrealist art that had a lasting impact on the movement: ‘Štyrský’s unusual openness toward sexual themes hastened his unprecedented, forceful imagination toward extremely potent visions that had an immediate effect on the young generation’ (Vladimír Birgus, Czech Photographic Avant-Garde 1918-1948, London, 2002).