Alfred Kubin

Alfred Kubin was a fascinating relatively unknown Austrian graphic artist known for his drawings and paintings of dreamlike fantastic, often morbid subjects. He was of Czech ancestry, born in Bohemia in 1877. He spent his childhood and student days in Salzburg, where he attended the arts and crafts school. After that he was trained for four years by the photographer Beer in Klagenfurt. In 1896 he tried to commit suicide at the grave of his mother, from whose untimely death he could not recover. In spring 1898 Kubin moved to Munich and studied graphics and art at private art schools and at the academy of art.In 1904 he met Hedwig Gründler, sister of the author Oskar A.H. Schmitz, whom he married the same year. She financed the acquisition of the so-called 'Schlössl' in Zwickledt near Wernstein/Inn, where they moved in 1906. In Zwickledt he attended intensively to literature and his artistic production.In 1912 he became associated with the 'Blaue Reiter' group. He is considered an important representative of Expressionism, noted for dark, spectral, symbolic fantasies (often assembled into thematic series of drawings). From a dense tangle of lines emerge imaginative-demonic or defamiliarized erotic dreamscapes with ghosts appearing like hallucinations. His work, heavily influenced by his crisis-wrecked life, shows his sombre view of the world, he created thousands of pen-and-ink drawings and illustrations for more than 70 books by authors such as Dostoevsky, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Poe, Nerval and Strindberg. He was also the author of several books, the best known being his novel Die Andere Seite (The Other Side) 1909, an apocalyptic fantasy set in a oppressive imaginary land which had an atmosphere of claustrophobic absurdity. He died secluded in his 'Schlössl' in Zwickledt in 1959.