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The Artwork of Alfred Kubin

Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin was born in Litoměřice of the Czech Republic, formerly Leitmeritz of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in April of 1877. An important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism, he was an Austrian printmaker, illustrator and author known for his dark, spectral and symbolic fantasies, often assembled into a series of thematic drawings.

In 1892, Alfred Kubin began a four-year apprenticeship under landscape photographer and painter Alois Beer. After attempting suicide on his mother’s grave in 1896, he served one year in the Austrian Army before his release due to a mental breakdown. In 1898, Kubin studied at the atelier of German naturalist painter Ludwig Schmitt- Reutte which was followed by a short period of study at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

During his studies, Kubin became acquainted with the works of such Symbolist artists as Odilon Redon, Henry de Groux and Félicien Rops as well as the works of painter Edvard Munch and printmaker Max Klinger. His early works, mainly ink and wash drawings of fantastical or macabre subjects, were influenced by the aquatint techniques of Klinger and Francisco de Goya. Between 1902 and 1910, Kubin produced a small amount of oil paintings; however, his oeuvre consists mainly of watercolors, pen and ink drawings, and lithographs.

Beginning in 1906 until his death, Alfred Kubin lived a withdrawn life at Schloss Zwickledt, the manor house of an eleventh-century estate in northern Austria near the German border. He was joined by his wife, translator Hedwig Kubin, the sister of noted German writer Oscar Schmitz, until her death in 1948. By 1911, Kubin had exhibited his work at Berlin’s Galerie Paul Cassirer and at both Vienna and Berlin Secessionist exhibitions. He was also associated with the Blaue Reiter group, a loose confederacy founded by Wassily Kardinsky and Franz Marc for Expressionist artists’ exhibitions and publication activities. Kubin showed his work at the 1913 Blaue Reiter exhibition in Berlin that was sponsored by the German avant-garde art and literary magazine “Der Strum”.

Kubin became well established professionally by the 1920s. Represented by Otto Kallir’s Neue Gallery in Vienna, he worked as a printmaker and book illustrator with such major German dealers as Hans Goltz, J. B. Neumann and Frita Gurlitt. Kubin created illustrations for works by American author Edgar Allan Poe, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, and German fantasy author Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman, among others. He also supplied illustrations for the German fantasy magazine “Der Orchideengarten”. Founded in 1919 by freelance writers Karl Hans Strobl and Alfons von Czibulka, “The Orchid Garden” is considered the first fantasy magazine.

Alfred Kubin worked on a series of illustrations intended for Austrian novelist Gustav Meyrink’s upcoming novel “The Golem”. However due to an extended printing delay, Kubin used the completed illustrations for his only literary work, the 1908 “Die Andere Seite (The Other Side)”, a fantasy novel set in an oppressive society. These illustrations introduced a more realistic style, executed with intense pen strokes and sometimes heightened with watercolor, that would characterize his work for the remainder of his career.

Due to his isolation at Schloss Zwickledt, Kubin was able to live through the German Reich’s war years relatively undisturbed. He was able to exhibit some of his work; however, there was little demand for his drawings during the war years. In 1941, Otto Kallir’s Galerie St. Etienne in New York City held Kubin’s first American solo exhibition and would regularly exhibit his work after that show. Once the war had ended, Austria honored him with a retrospective in Vienna and later awarded him the Grand Austrian State Prize for Visual Arts in 1950.

Hailed as a national treasure by Austria, Alfred Kubin was given a section for his work, known as the Kubin Kabinett, at the prestigious Neue Galerie in the city of Linz. He was awarded the Austrian Medal for Science and Art in 1957. A member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Alfred Kubin died at his Zwickledt home in August of 1959 at the age of eighty-two.

Notes: The Kallir Research Institute, a nonprofit foundation, was established to expand upon the scholarship of art dealer and historian Otto Kallir. Primarily focused on Austrian and German expressionists, the Institute also specializes on artists who were sponsored by Otto Kallir. On its site, there is a short biography of Alfred Kubin and links to his work: https://kallirresearch.org/bio-alfred-kubin/

Top Insert Image: Nicola Perscheid, “Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin”, 1898, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Alfred Kubin, “Prähistorische Büffel (Prehistoric Buffalo)”, circa 1907, Gouache and Tempera on Kataster Paper, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Alfred Kubin, “Prähistorische Vögel (Prehistoric Bird)”, circa 1906-07, Tempera on Kataster Paper, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Eric Schaal, “Portrait of Alfred Kubin”, 1958, Gelatin Silver Print, 9.4 x 7.4 cm, Private Collection

Franz Marc, “Playing Dogs”, 1912, Oil on Canvas, Busch Reisinger Museum, Boston, Massachusetts

Franz Marc was born on February 8, 1880, in Munich. The son of a landscape painter, he decided to become an artist after a year of military service interrupted his plans to study philology. From 1900 to 1902 Marc studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with historical painter and teacher Gabriel Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez, a painter and illustrator of the Munich School.

In 1903 during a visit to France, Franz Marc was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of the Impressionists in Paris. After suffering through three years of depression, Marc traveled again to Paris in 1907, where he responded enthusiastically to the work of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the Cubists, and the Expressionists. He was also impressed by the 1910 Henri Matisse exhibition he viewed in Munich.

In 1910 Marc’s first solo show was held at Kunsthandlung Brackl in Munich. At that time he met expressionist painter August Macke and the collector Bernhard Koehler. Marc was formally welcomed into the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) early in 1911, when he met Vasily Kandinsky. After internal dissension split the NKVM, Marc and Kandinsky formed ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ (The Blue Rider) whose first exhibition took place in December 1911 at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich.

Marc invited members of the Berlin Brücke group to participate in the second ‘Der Blaue Reiter ‘ show two months later at the Galerie Hans Goltz in Munich. When First World War broke out in August 1914, Marc immediately enlisted: during the war, he produced his “Sketchbook from the Field”, a collection of thirty-six small pencil drawings. Just a few months later, Franz Marc died on March 4, 1916, in Braquis, near Verdun-sur-Meuse, France.

Franz Marc’s “Playing Dogs” was painted in 1912 when he was thirty-two years of age. This painting is an example of Franz Marc’s use of color and his move towards Cubism. A meeting with the artist Robert Delaunay that year had inspired Marc about the use of color in his work. He used bold colors in this painting such as blue, green, red and yellow throughout the background, coloring the playing dogs in contrast to accentuate them.