“Sleeping”, a surrealist painting by Toyen, sells for 20 million

The surrealist painting “Spící” (Sleeping) by the Czech modernist painter Toyen sold for the bidding price of 20 million crowns, or just over one million US dollars, at an auction in Prague on Sunday, fetching the second highest price in the history of Czech art auctions. The painting was created in 1937 by the painter Marie Čermínová, better known by her pseudonym Toyen, and sold to a family in England a year later. “Spící” is considered one of the most significant works of European surrealism, and a key painting in Toyen’s work. The painter, born in Prague in 1902, left Czechoslovakia for France after the communists took power in 1948, and died in Paris in 1980.