Mother – the manifesto of Toyism written by Dejo on september 5, 1992.
In 1992 a group of artists, now expanded to twenty, formed an aesthetic around the idea of toys and play. Rejecting the recent emphasis on ego in art, founder of Toyism Dejo wrote a manifesto called ‘Mother’, and used this as a watchword for ‘Art through the mind of a Toyist.’
Their style is figurative, colorful and precise; their images like fragments of a fairy tale. The artists use pseudonyms and masks to hide their true identities, all the while continuing to create work under their real names. They identify themselves using nicknames such as ‘Pixy’, ‘Toescat’, and ‘Mwano’.
Since the first exhibition in 1993 (Veen Museum: Emmen, the Netherlands) until 1999, the Toyism movement has progressively grown, building a solid foundation for Toyist art. After the year 2000 the style further developed with new artists. The appealing characteristics of Toyist paintings involve the use of bright, lively and intense colors.
The colors’ energy, along with lines, dots and shapes, are used to convey deep meanings through a playful point of view. Toyist art reveals a strong consciousness of not only the issues that globally afflict our times, but the joy we experience in life…From ecology and environmental pollution to our love of the earth and animals… From conflicts of war, yet the hope for world peace… From the inner struggles of the individual, to the quest for self-improvement.
These contrasts are expressed through symbols, vivid colors, and meticulous detail. Toyism clearly places itself against the Ego that our society has over-developed. This is also the reason why all the Toyist artists paint under a pseudonym; they appear as anonymous, yet are part of the whole of Toyism, which they represent through their paintings, and the cartoon-type figures they typify. This is part of the game.
The art game played in Toyism is a serious matter. This sort of “playing” is intended to open up the viewer’s mind to a new, critical, and sensitive vision of the world. In effect, one of the most common factors among Toyists are their open minds, and the way in which they embrace other cultures, artists and their own Toyist role.
In Toyism you must learn a new language: how to read and write with lines and dots, and how to use colors and shapes to convey the story a painting is supposed to tell. Each painting introduces a new game and tells a new story to be read by the public. In addition, the artists can either play this art-making game alone or with other Toyists. There are also multi-Toyist artworks, in which a series of paintings are combined to form one large piece…to make it whole. On these occasions, the viewer is clearly able to perceive the game played by the artists and can take an active part in it, since his/her role is definitively to untie the knots of the Toyist puzzle and interpret its symbols.
Toyism has developed a very unique art style and has a strong concept for an “art group” that is totally new to the contemporary art panorama. Communication, poetry, emotion, and beauty are only some of the main aspects of Toyism that have appealed to the artists who have joined the group over the years.