The painting by the artist Toyen "Monte Carlo" was auctioned for 64.8 million crowns.

Toyen: Monte Carlo, 1926. Oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm

Prague – The painting by the artist Toyen titled Monte Carlo from 1926 was sold at today’s auction in Prague for 64.8 million crowns including the auction premium. The starting price of the artwork was 18 million crowns, and the final price exceeded even the maximum pre-auction estimate. There is another work by the exceptionally popular author among Czech collectors in today’s auction, the post-war canvas Il s'anime from 1957, which will be offered for seven million crowns.

The most expensive painting by Toyen sold at Czech auctions since 2021 is the painting Circus from the 1920s. The new owner paid 79.56 million crowns for it.

The painting Monte Carlo is the highest valued item at today’s auction. Experts consider it a significant discovery in Toyen's early artificialist work. Until now, it was known only from brief mentions in literature and had been exhibited just once. Toyen created it shortly after her arrival in Paris, where she decided to move with Jindřich Štyrský in the autumn of 1925.

At that time, the local avant-garde artists were enchanted by the geometric visual language drawn from the tradition of synthetic cubism; however, Toyen struggled to find her way to it and preferred to engage in naive figurative paintings, still influenced by Henri Rousseau.

The painting Still Life with Mandolin by Emil Filla was sold today for 19.44 million crowns, which had a starting price of ten million crowns. A new author record was set with the painting titled Moravany by Slovak painter Ľudovít Fulla (1902 to 1980). The work was initially offered at 700,000 crowns and sold for 5.4 million crowns, including the auction premium.