10.04.1877 – 20.08.1959

Alfred Kubin’s gloomy and frightening works fascinate and repel at the same time. Strange images, born in the imagination of the artist, create on paper an amazing, but disturbing world. This world he illustrates and describes in his book The Other Side.

“Austrian Goya” was born April 10, 1877 in a wealthy family, but the artist’s childhood was overshadowed by the death of his brother and the early death of his mother. At her funeral, ten-year-old Alfred Kubin made the first attempt at suicide.

In 1898, Kubin went to Munich, where he began a thorough preparation for admission to the Academy of Arts. However, he did not stay long at the Academy. Alfred Kubin began cooperation with the magazine Simplicissimus and got acquainted with many outstanding artists, the work of Edvard Munch and Odilon Redon had a great influence on his work. In the early watercolors of Kubin, frightening and cold, the symbolism of Redon can be clearly seen. However, symbolism is replaced by expression, drawings are grotesque and fantastic.

In 1906, Kubin marries, and the young couple leave Munich, settling in the castle of Zwickledt in Upper Austria. But despite the solitary way of life, the artist takes part in the creation of the “New Munich Union of Artists” in 1909, and two years later he joins the “Blue Rider”, the union of Expressionist artists.

In 1909, Alfred Kubin’s novel “The Other Side” was published, an integral part of which drawings were made by the author himself. In the illustration, the master achieved extraordinary successes, but in them there are also the motives of doom, the gloom of the universe and the aimlessness of human life. Alfred Kubin created illustrations for the works of Flaubert, Po, Dostoevsky, Hoffmann.

Despite several attempts at suicide, a gloomy misanthropic view of the world, Kubin lived a great life: the artist died on the 83rd year of life on August 20, 1959.