Alfred Kubin

One of the most accomplished draughtsmen of visions in the 20th century, Alfred Kubin was also one of the gloomiest. Born in 1877 at Leitmeritz in Bohemia, Kubin spent his youth and years of study at the School of Applied Arts in Salzburg, later studying art and taking drawing lessons in Munich. Inspired by his fascination with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, influenced artistically by Goya, Klinger, Ensor, Redon, Rops, and Munch, Kubin first found his own idiosyncratic Kubinesque set of motifs, rooted in dream visions, at the turn of the century. He called his imagery a vital "escape into the unreal": ghostly motifs, hybrid creatures, variants of torture and self-torture, dream, vampirism, spiritualism, decadence, erotics, death, and birth. His extraordinary oeuvre comprises more than 20,000 drawings, a large part of them done in pen, as portfolio pieces, and as illustrations for more than 70 books, all of them testifying to his gloomy worldview. This book features a representative selection of master sheets by the bizarre multitalent.