With sarcastically cynical humour and a fine sense for absurd human depths and grotesque monstrosities, Alfred Kubin followed in the footsteps of Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya, whose graphic works were to be found in his collection – as were those of artists like Henry Fuseli and James Ensor.
The subtle cruelty of the present early work reveals itself to viewers only in the sum of its visual symbols. Abandoned, left behind, cast out or forgotten – on his own initiative, like a hermit, or through no fault of his own, like a leper – the sparsely clad, desolate figure turning towards the last signs of civilisation on the distant horizon stirs our pity as well as our fascination with the horrible. The descending night and the bluish-green flesh tones make us fear the worst.
“However, the existence of some works by similarly tempered artists from more recent and more distant epochs did indeed provide me with a stimulus and the courage to keep working when the malicious resistance of the outside world […] was comparable to a test of the strength of my own talent’s fatal nature” (Alfred Kubin, Zur Eröffnung einer Kubin-Ausstellung 1927, cited in: exh. cat. Alfred Kubin und seine Sammlung, Linz 2015, p. 25). Although Kubin was of a weak psychological and physical constitution, he quickly achieved success after his studies at the academy in Munich with a 1902 exhibition at Paul Cassirer’s gallery. The years that followed were characterised by artistic successes in spite of spiritual depths. Kubin’s first retrospective was held in 1921 at the Galerie Goltz in Munich and included over 100 works. Freeing himself from his role models, he found his way to an extremely idiosyncratic and independent body of work.