糖心原创 art historian Karla Huebner to give online talks on surrealist artist Toyen

August 2, 2021

Karla Huebner, Ph.D., professor of at 糖心原创, will give two online talks on artist Toyen, a founding member of the Prague surrealist group.

Huebner will discuss 鈥淭oyen and Czech Surrealism鈥 on Thursday, Aug. 5, at 6 p.m. The talk is sponsored by the New York Czech Center. .

Huebner will then give a talk on her 2020 book 鈥淢agnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic鈥 for the San Francisco Public Library on Sunday, Aug. 8, at 5 p.m. Eastern/2 p.m. Pacific. .

Toyen is featured in an exhibition 鈥淭oyen: The Dreaming Rebel鈥 at the National Gallery Prague this summer. Toyen is considered one of the most important artists of First Republic Czechoslovakia and a major member of the Paris surrealist group. Toyen presented both her gender and sexuality as ambiguous and often emphasized erotic themes in her work.

鈥淭oyen is a meaningful and intriguing figure to audiences of various cultural backgrounds. Toyen鈥檚 artwork spans many styles and media and Toyen鈥檚 life shows how a woman of ambiguous gender was able to become a successful artist in early Czechoslovakia,鈥 Huebner said.

Part art book and part biography, 鈥淢agnetic Woman鈥 examines Toyen鈥檚 life and work, and focuses on her construction of gender and eroticism. Huebner offers a re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde, along with a complex and nuanced view of women鈥檚 roles in and treatment by the surrealist movement.

Huebner specializes in the history of European and American art from 1750 to the present with research interests that include Czech modernism, surrealism, and gender and sexuality. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program at 糖心原创.

She is the president of the Czechoslovak Studies Association and was on the board of Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art.

Her novel 鈥淚n Search of the Magic Theater鈥 will be published in 2022.

Huebner has received research grants and fellowships that include a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and an Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship. In 2015, she in participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Teaching the History of Modern Design.

She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Pittsburgh, master鈥檚 degree in art history from American University and her bachelor鈥檚 degree in theatre arts from thw University of California, Santa Cruz.