Kristians Tonny

Tonny Kristians (September 13, 1907 — June 20, 1977), known as Kristians Tonny, was a Surrealist painter and draftsman whose career spanned from the 1920s through to the 1970s. Born in Amsterdam, he moved to Paris with his parents in 1913. Encouraged by his father, he began painting and drawing at an early age, which resulted in him getting his first exhibition at the Paris gallery Mouninou at the age of twelve and breaking through as an avant-garde artist in 1929. Later in life his he suffered considerable setbacks both his personal life and in his career, as a result of which interest in his work dwindled.

His talent was recognized early on by his father, A. Kristians, who began to encourage him. He was made to stay at home and help his father in the studio. He also went with his parents wherever they went. This way the Paris street-life, the cabarets and the cinema where some of the things that provided him with much of the inspiration for his early work.

He was considered a child prodigy and quickly became noticed. He had his first exhibition in 1920 at the Parisian gallery Mouninou, followed in 1924 by a first exhibition in the Netherlands at the Amsterdam artist’s society De Kring.

When he was about 15 years old he also regularly visited the studio of the draftsman Jules Pascin. He never was a real apprentice of Pascin, yet he learned a lot from him. In particular, he advanced the development of the transfer technique, a blind drawing technique thought up by Pascin as an experiment in free expression. Kristians Tonny perfected this technique and made it entirely his own.

In 1925 he participated in the first major Surrealist exhibition, the Exposition Surréaliste at Galerie Pierre in Paris. Soon after he was regarded as an established artist, favored by the critics of the time and his work being bought by serious collectors.

He had befriended Gertrude Stein, the American poet, writer and collector of modern art, Whose portrait he painted in 1930, being the second artist after Pablo Picasso to do so. Stein encouraged him to lease a studio on a long-term contract. A private quarrel lead to a major split between them and he decided to leave for Tanger, Morocco. Part of the reason for Tonny's disagreement with Stein and his departure for Tangier was Stein's disapproval of his relationship with his lover Anita Thompson. Stein tried separating them by arranging for Thompson to lose a job in France and be offered another in Tangier instead Tonny followed Thompson. After about one year he returned to Europe, staying in France and in the Netherlands before definitively returning to Paris.

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