Plant and mineral elements or details of mysterious beings emerge from her seemingly abstract canvases, as in the cycle Seven Unsheathed Swords, which comprises seven vertical- format canvases. Seven poets wrote poems for each of the cycle’s paintings. The title was proposed by Georges Goldfayn, who drew inspiration from Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem Seven Swords in which the poet associates seven blades with seven female names. The addition of »unsheathed« creates further chains of association. Toyen focuses on the depiction of a gown-like garment with an absent body, similar to her earlier paintings from the 1930s. But this time, the women/swords are both disturbing and alluring, and their absent bodies can be spotted in the ingeniously exposed details (the tip of a foot, a finger).

"stream of nocturnal images"

"images emerging from the darkness remain enigmatic and shifting, as they are in dreams"

Bertrand Schmitt on Toyen