Biography
Born in Bohemia in 1877, Alfred Kubin began his artistic training as an apprentice to the landscape photographer Alois Beer. This ended in 1896 when he tried to commit suicide at his mother’s grave. This was followed by a nervous breakdown in 1897, which led to his discharge from the Austrian army. Enrolling at the Munich Academy in 1899, he discovered the works of Odilon Redon, James Ensor, and Goya, as well as being profoundly affected by Max Klinger, with whom he felt a deep affinity. His output consisted mostly of aquatint drawings of surreal and macabre subjects executed on cartography paper, sourced by his father, a land surveyor to the monarchy. Although Kubin’s best works are the ink drawings, which retain a dark symbolist spirit, he also illustrated books and exhibited work in numerous exhibtions. In 1911 he associated and exhibited with Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group, as well as illustrating the novels of Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He also wrote The Other Side, a novel admired by Franz Kafka. His mental instability led him to live a reclusive life in a small castle in Austria, where he lived from 1906 until his death in 1959.
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