Czech Republic (then Bohemia), (1877-1959)
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Circe
- (c. 1924), printed lithograph on heavy wove paper
- 9.4 x 14.8 in.(23.8 x 37.6 cm.)
- from: Christmastide (1925),
a thematic series of thirteen lithographs - Private collection
About the Artist
Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was born in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. He lived and worked for most of his life in Germany and Austria. Kubin is considered an important representative of Symbolism and Expressionism and credited his artistic influence to the work of Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch, James Ensor, Henry de Groux, Félicien Rops and Max Klinger.
Literature served as an inspiration to Kubin as well, and he drew from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Nikolai Gogol. He also illustrated his own bizarre novel The Other Side (1908).
The majority of Kubin’s output consisted of pen and ink drawings, ink and wash drawings, watercolors, and lithographs. He is noted for nightmarish, dark, hallucinatory visions of violence and eroticism and macabre and symbolic fantasies. He often created related works and assembled them into thematic series of drawings. [DES-01/11]