Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin (1877 –1959) was an Austrian printmaker, illustrator, and occasional writer. Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism.
Kubin was born in Bohemia in the town of Leitmeritz, Austro-Hungarian Empire. From 1892 to 1896, he was apprenticed to the landscape photographer Alois Beer, although he learned little. In 1896, he attempted suicide on his mother's grave, and his short stint in the Austrian army the following year ended with a nervous breakdown. In 1898, Kubin began a period of artistic study at a private academy run by the painter Ludwig Schmitt-Reutte, before enrolling at the Munich Academy in 1899, without finishing his studies there. In Munich, Kubin discovered the works of Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch, James Ensor, Henry de Groux, and Félicien Rops.
He was profoundly affected by the prints of Max Klinger, and later recounted: "Here a new art was thrown open to me, which offered free play for the imaginative expression of every conceivable world of feeling. Before putting the engravings away I swore that I would dedicate my life to the creation of similar works". The aquatint technique used by Klinger and Goya influenced the style of his works of this period, which are mainly ink and wash drawings of fantastical, often macabre subjects. Kubin produced a small number of oil paintings in the years between 1902 and 1910, but thereafter his output consisted of pen and ink drawings, watercolors, and lithographs. In 1911, he became associated with the Blaue Reiter group, and exhibited with them in the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin in 1913. After that time, he lost contact with the artistic avant-garde.
Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism and is noted for dark, spectral, symbolic fantasies, often assembled into thematic series of drawings. Kubin had both artistic and literary talent. He illustrated the works of Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. Kubin also illustrated the German fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten.
From 1906 until his death, he lived a withdrawn life in a Manor-House on a 12th-century estate in Upper Austria. In 1938, at the Anschluss of Austria and Nazi Germany, his work was declared entartete Kunst or "degenerate art," but he managed to continue working during World War II.
Kubin's only written work was Die andere Seite (transl. The Other Side) (1908), a fantastic novel set in an oppressive imaginary land. The novel has an atmosphere of claustrophobic absurdity similar to the writings of Franz Kafka, who admired the book. The illustrations for the book were originally intended for The Golem by Gustav Meyrink, but as that book was delayed, Kubin instead worked his illustrations into his own novel.
© 2020. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Alfred Kubin or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| The State 1899–1900 |
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| Ede nacht besucht uns ein traum 1900 |
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| The Witch 1900 |
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| Untitled (The Eternal Flame) 1900 |
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| War Game Military Cemetery Music 1900 |
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| Epidemic 1900-01 |
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| Into The Unknown 1900-01 |
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| One Women for All 1900-01 |
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| Dolmen 1900–02 |
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| Danger 1901 |
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| Starvation (Famine) 1901 |
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| The Last Adventure 1901 |
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| The Past Forgotten Swallowed 1901 |
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| The Terror 1901 |
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| Polar Bear 1901–02 |
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| Male Sphinx 1901-03 |
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| The devil on the chimney 1902 |
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| Siberian Fairy Tale 1902 |
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| The Last King 1902 |
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| The Man 1902 |
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| The Moment of Birth 1902 |
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| In a Dream 1903 |
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| Angst 1903 |
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| Dream Animal 1903 |
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| Forgotte-buried 1903 |
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| Hour of death 1903 |
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| Man in a Storm 1903 |
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| The Brood 1903 |
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| The Plague 1903-04 |
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| Alpine Dream 1904 |
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| Black Mass 1905 |
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| The Emperor of China 1910 |
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| Caliban from the portfolio Visions of Shakespeare 1918 |
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| The Rat House n.d. |
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| Untitled n.d. |
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