Alfred Kubin

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Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin (10 April 1877 – 20 August 1959) was an Austrian artist, printmaker, illustrator, and writer of a single novel, The Other Side. Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism.

Biography

Kubin was born in Bohemia in the town of Leitmeritz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Litoměřice). From 1892 to 1896, he was apprenticed to the landscape photographer Alois Beer, although he learned little.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name=":0" /> 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".<ref name="ARN88">Arnason & Wheeler 1986, p. 88.</ref> 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.<ref name=":0" />

In 1902, Kubin exhibited at the prestigious Cassirer Gallery in Berlin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Soon after, having met the publisher Hans von Weber in Munich in 1901, in 1903 the Hans von Weber Portfolio reproduced 15 of Kubin's works on paper as prints, which allowed a wider distribution of his work, and established his fame.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> According to one contemporary critic, Kubin's work occupied "the darkroom of the modern soul".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref name="ARN88" /> After that time, he lost contact with the artistic avant-garde.

File:Herrensitz von Alfred Kubin in Zwickledt Oberoesterreich.png
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.<ref name="studien">Siegfried Schödel, Studien zu den phantastischen Erzählungen Gustav Meyrinks, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1965, (p.27).</ref><ref name="nyt">Rosenberg, Karen. 15 October 2008. Mapping the Shadowy Corners of the Subconscious. The New York Times. Retrieved 3 April 2012.</ref>

From 1906 until his death, he lived a withdrawn life in a Manor-House on a 12th-century estate in Zwickledt, Upper Austria.<ref name="nyt" /> In 1938, at the Anschluss of Austria and Nazi Germany, his work was declared entartete Kunst or "degenerate art",<ref>Karl-Heinz Meissner, Alfred Kubin, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus München, Edition Spangenberg, 1990 (p.114).</ref> but he managed to continue working during World War II.

The Other Side

Kubin's only novel was The Other Side (Template:Langx) (1909), a fantastic novel set in an oppressive imaginary land.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Kubin, Alfred, The Life and Art of Alfred Kubin, Dover 2017 (Bibliographic note). Viewable through Amazon.com's Look Inside feature for the book.</ref> The novel has an atmosphere of claustrophobic absurdity.<ref name="nyt" /><ref>Franz Rottensteiner,The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History from Dracula to Tolkien (p. 143) Collier Books, 1978. Template:ISBN</ref> 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.<ref name="studien" />

The Other Side influenced a number of Austrian and German writers, notably Ernst Jünger, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, Hermann Kasack and Christoph Ransmayr.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It has achieved cult status, receiving praise from Jeff VanderMeer and other writers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Drawings sold under duress

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> which launched Nazi-era provenance research in 2008.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Honours and awards

Collections

  • Kubin's Dance of Death and Other Drawings (1973) (art collection) (Template:ISBN)
  • The Life and Art of Alfred Kubin (2017) (autobiography) (Template:ISBN)

See also

Notes

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References

  • Arnason, H. H., & Wheeler, D. (1986). History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Template:ISBN
  • Assman, Peter Alfred Kubin 1877–1959. Exhibition catalogue Brussels (Ixelles) 1997
  • Alfred Kubin. Exhibition catalogue Neue Galerie New York 2008
  • Romana Schuler Alfred Kubin, Aus meinem Reich. Exhibition catalogue Leopold Museum Vienna 2003
  • Traumgestalten. 100 Meisterwerke aus dem Besitz der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina. Vienna 1990

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