A craftsman and his oeuvre, the
full spectrum of Alfred Kubin
The life of an artist, tortured and transformes constantly
When Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin was born on April 10, 1877, in the small town of Leitmeritz in Northern Bohemia, he quickly realised he was in a family of artists. From Johanna Kubin, her mother, a pianist and his uncle Alois Beer, a famous photographer.
But when the family decided to move to Salzburg and Zell am See, Kubin received a classical education, from its elementary-school years until the death of her mom, Johanna Kubin which died of consumption at the age of 40. This will lead to three children, with Kubin's dad in charge...
At 14 years old, Alfred Kubin went back to Salzburg for an arts-and-crafts education at the State Trade School. Afterward, he will start an apprenticeship as a photographer with his uncle Alois Beer and six years later moved to Munich to study art. First to the private school of drawing of Ludwig Schmidt-Reutte and, from May 1899, enrolled for Nikolaus Gysis’s drawing class at the Academy of Fine Arts.
At the same moment, he dropped out of school, visitor many museum and read text from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer before being influenced by the art of Max Klinger, which he saw at the Munich Kupferstichkabinett in 1899. This will lead to his practice, where he created hundreds of black-and-white sprayed and washed ink pen drawings inspired by the oeuvre of Francisco de Goya, Félicien Rops, Edvard Munch, James Ensor and Odilon Redon.
This man will shape himself in Munich, from the café, the local art scene, poet (such as Max Dauthendey and Otto Julius Bierbaum) and art patron such as Hans von Weber who later became his publisher and brought out a portfolio of facsimile prints of Kubin’s drawings in 1901. Later that year, he will have his first exhibition in the Berlin Gallery of Paul Cassirer.
Starting in 1901, the art of Alfred Kubin will start to spread. From exhibition (devoted to him or with works by him), to critics, important art event such as the exhibition of the Vienna Secession, books illustrations and writings.
Sadly, the artist will die on August 20, 1959, after a long sickness...
The exhibition of the Leopold
The general concept of the exhibition focuses on those specific point, when the artist was at the front of those military conflicts, violences, destructions, pandemics, natural disasters and his own destruction.
Most of those themes are shaped around the artist early years, where he was still in school and high-school and when he faced depression and loneliness. After his study in Munich, which he failed, his new beginning will start with the oeuvre of Max Klinger.
With this exhibition at the Munich Kupferstichkabinett, Klinger caused "a torrent of visions of black-and-white images (...) filled with astonishment and ecstasy". With this artist in mind, and during 60 years of practice and oeuvre, his style will change constantly. From the use of motifs, themes, visions, points of view (sometime photographic due to his uncle Alois Beer, a famous photographer) and artists like Francisco de Goya, Félicien Rops, James Ensor, Max Klinger, Odilon Redon and Edvard Munch.
Beside his art, we can't say Kubin without his novel and his illustration for his book and other author such as Allan Poe, Gérard de Nerval, August Strindberg and Gustav Meyrink.
In that spectrum of creation, Kubin was always fascinated by the start of this new century, from the evolution of science, the human class that are disappearing and an urge to creation and new beginning with the evolution and the industrial revolution. Nonetheless, to create this new kind of picture, he will need to go back, to the past, to Goya, Bosch, Brueghel and to create link between their oeuvre, their themes and his will to create powerful pictures out of black ink and white paper.
Those two materials will help him though the two world wars, even though Cuban was exempted from military service owing, he always fears of being called up and of possibly dying in the war. Kubin was experimental during those war years, from his own heart and struggle witch depict itself onto the paper to scene of war made between fantasy and reality.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Leopold Museum
Date: 16.4.2022 – 24.7.2022
Curators: Hans-Peter Wipplinger and August Ruhs
Ticket: Available on the website of the Leopold Museum OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Leopold Museum
Leopold Museum
MuseumsQuartier
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien
Phone: +43 1 52 57 00