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Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin (10 April 1877 – 20 August 1959) was an Austrian printmaker, illustrator, and occasional writer. Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism.
Biography
Kubin was born in Bohemia in the town of Leitmeritz, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Litoměřice). From 1892 to 1896, he was apprenticed to the landscape photographer Alois Beer, although he learned little.[1] 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.[1] 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".[2] 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.[1] 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.[2] After that time, he lost contact with the artistic avant-garde.
Manor-House Zwickledt (Upper Austria): Last residence of Alfred Kubin.
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. Like Oskar Kokoschka and Albert Paris Gütersloh, Kubin had both artistic and literary talent. He illustrated works of Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. Kubin also illustrated the German fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten.[3][4]
From 1906 until his death, he lived a withdrawn life in a Manor-House on a 12th-century estate in Zwickledt, Upper Austria.[4] In 1938, at the Anschluss of Austria and Nazi Germany, his work was declared entartete Kunst or "degenerate art,"[5] but he managed to continue working during World War II.
The Other Side
Kubin's only literary work was Die andere Seite (transl. The Other Side) (1908), a fantastic novel set in an oppressive imaginary land.[6][7][8][9] The novel has an atmosphere of claustrophobic absurdity similar to the writings of Franz Kafka, who admired the book.[4][10] 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.[3]
Nazi-looted art
In 2016, the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Munich restituted, to the heirs of Max and Hertha Morgenstern, 16 drawings by Kubin which had been sold under duress in Vienna in July 1938 as a result of Nazi persecution of Jews following Austria's Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Lenbachhaus had acquired them from Kurt Otte, a Kubin collector in Hamburg in 1971.[11]
The German Lost Art Foundation lists 24 artworks by Kubin in its database, many of which are from the Found-Object Reports from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden[12] which launched Nazi-era provenance research in 2008.[13]
Honours and awards
City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts (1950)
Grand Austrian State Prize for Visual Art (1951)
Austrian Medal for Science and Art (1957)
Gustav Klimt badge as an honorary member of the Vienna Secession ***** Alfred Kubin was a Bohemian printmaker and illustrator who became an important figure of both the Symbolist and Expressionist movements. His inventive black-and-white drawings often featured fantastical or morbid elements, and depicted supernatural creatures and sexual violence. Born on April 10, 1877 in Leitmeritz, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Kubin had an emotionally unstable childhood, attempting suicide and suffering a nervous breakdown before the age of 20. Upon moving to Munich in 1899, he was introduced to the works of Francisco de Goya and Max Klinger, the latter having a particularly profound impact on Kubin. He began producing nightmarish ink-and-wash drawings, and briefly became affiliated with the Russian artist émigré group, the Der Blaue Reiter, which included Wassily Kandinsky and Marianne Werefkin. Kubin was perhaps best known for illustrating the German editions of books by Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky. During rise of Nazism in Germany, his work was considered degenerate; he retreated into solitude and lived in a castle in Zwickledt, Upper Austria. He was awarded the City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts in 1950, and died at his home on August 20, 1959. ***** Alfred Kubin
Austrian artist
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Last Updated: Apr 6, 2024 • Article History
Born: April 10, 1877, Leitmeritz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Litoměřice, Czech Republic]
Died: August 24, 1959, Zwickledt, Austria (aged 82)
Alfred Kubin (born April 10, 1877, Leitmeritz, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Litoměřice, Czech Republic]—died August 24, 1959, Zwickledt, Austria) was an Austrian graphic artist known for his drawings and paintings of dreamlike, often morbid, subjects.
In 1898 Kubin went to Munich, Bavaria, in the German Empire (now Germany), to study art. As a student, he discovered the works that would become his major influences: the fantastic and morbid prints of French Symbolist Odilon Redon and of Belgian painter James Ensor, and the strange and 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 adopted a more spontaneous-looking drawing style that is often described as “spidery.”
Tate Modern extension Switch House, London, England. (Tavatnik, museums). Photo dated 2017.
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In 1902 Kubin had his first exhibition 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. Later that year Kubin settled at Zwickledt, Austria, where he continued to live for most of his life. He exhibited with the Blaue Reiter group in Munich in 1912 and at Der Sturm in 1913. He suffused his works with images of death, of a menacing female sexuality, and of various bizarre animals, all of which he depicted in dim light against shadowy backgrounds, evoking a haunting expectation of some sinister turn of events. 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”).The Austrian graphic artist, writer and illustrator Alfred Kubin takes the spectator on a journey away from everyday occurrence to fantastical dream worlds. He prefers to draw with pen and ink and creates a new world, which casts a spell on the spectators. Nowadays his work is part of international collections and museums, such as the Graphische Sammlung Albertina in Vienna.
Widder Fine Arts presents works of Alfred Kubin in the gallery and on varies art shows. We are looking forward to show you some of his drawings during your visit. If you are interested in selling or purchasing works of Alfred Kubin, you are invited to contact us by phone, e-mail or at a visit in our gallery. We are pleased to inform you as well in our newsletter, which you can subscribe here.*** The first twenty years of Alfred Kubin’s life were largely unhappy, punctuated by the untimely death of his mother, a suicide attempt at nineteen, and a complete mental and physical collapse in 1897. Once recovered, Kubin was sent to Munich to study art, a longtime avocation for which he had shown some talent. In Germany, his nightmarish depictions of fantastical creatures inhabiting shadowy realms quickly propelled him to prominence. By 1911, he had exhibited at Berlin’s Galerie Paul Cassirer and with the Vienna and Berlin Secessions. He was also associated with the Phalanx Group (and through it, with Wassily Kandinsky’s Expressionist circle), the Neuekünstlervereinigung, and the Blaue Reiter group.
Even during this period of productivity and artistic achievement, Kubin was pursued by tragedy. He endured the loss of a fiancée to typhus and the death of his father, and witnessed his chronically-ill wife’s descent into morphine addiction. Thrust again into spiritual and emotional crisis, Kubin turned to writing, producing the allegorical novel The Other Side. The illustrations for the proto-Expressionistic text, which took just twelve weeks to complete, introduced a more realistic style that would, with minor modifications, characterize Kubin’s work for the remainder of his career. Frenetic pen-strokes, sometimes livened with touches of watercolor, replaced the misty “spray technique” of former years.
By the 1920s Kubin was well established professionally, though his activity had slowed after the First World War. He enjoyed a lucrative career as a printmaker and book illustrator, showed with such major German dealers as Hans Goltz, Fritz Gurlitt, and J.B. Neumann, and in Vienna, was represented by Otto Kallir’s Neue Galerie. Despite Kubin’s prolific correspondence with numerous far-flung friends, the artist led an essentially reclusive existence. When the Nazis marched into Austria in 1938, he was taken completely by surprise, for he neither owned a radio nor read newspapers.
Kubin’s isolation enabled him to live out the Nazi years relatively undisturbed. Unlike some banned German colleagues, he did not have to go into “inner exile,” because he was effectively already there. He could continue to exhibit, though there was little demand for his quirky drawings in Hitler’s Reich. Once the war ended, Kubin’s native Austria hailed him as a national treasure, honoring him with a retrospective in Vienna and the establishment of a “Kubin Kabinett” at the Neue Galerie in Linz. Similar accolades followed until his death in 1959.. ebay6310/214