Alfred Kubin

Biografie
1877 - 1959

Uber den Künstler

Alfred Kubin, (April 10, 1877, Leitmeritz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Litoměřice, Czech Republic]—August 24, 1959, Zwickledt, Austria), Austrian graphic artist known for his drawings and paintings of dreamlike, often morbid, subjects.

In 1898 he settled in Munich, Bavaria, in the German Empire to study art. His major influences were the fantastic prints of French Symbolist Odilon Redon, the Belgian painter James Ensor and the imaginative etchings of German artist Max Klinger. Kubin’s early drawings were usually executed in an ink-and-wash technique that attempted to emulate the velvety aquatints of Redon and Klinger. He later began to develop a more spontaneous-looking drawing style, often characterized as “spidery.” In 1902 Kubin’s work was shown at the Cassirer Gallery in Berlin, and the next year he completed the first of many book illustrations. He visited the aging Redon’s Paris studio in 1906. In the same year Kubin moven to Zwickledt, Austria, where he lived for most of his life. He exhibited with the Blaue Reiter group in Munich in 1912 and at Der Sturm in 1913.

Images of death, menacing female sexuality and of various bizarre animals are important themes in his work. The nightmarish world Kubin created in his drawings reflects his own inner turmoil; he attempted suicide in 1896 and suffered a mental breakdown in 1903. Kubin seems to have chosen the books he illustrated—by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky—for their macabre qualities. Kubin also wrote a novel inspired by the death of his father, Die andere Seite (1909; “The Other Side”).

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