Alfred Kubin

A pioneer of the Symbolist and Expressionist movements, Bohemian illustrator and printmaker Alfred Kubin often evoked dark, morbid and imaginative elements to create his riveting black-and-white drawings. Born in Leitmeritz, Bohemia on April 10, 1877, Alfred Leopold Isidor Kubin endured a traumatic childhood: at the age of ten, he witnessed his mother’s agonizing death from tuberculosis; soon after, his father had married his mother’s sister, who herself died within the year; before he turned twelve, he was subjected to sexual abuse by an older, pregnant woman. At fifteen, Kubin was apprenticed to the landscape photographer Alois Beer, although the experience was not salutary, and at its conclusion he attempted suicide on his mother’s grave. After a brief stint in the Austrian army and another mental breakdown, Kubin began studying art, first at a private studio and then at the Munich Academy. It was in Munich that the young artist first encountered the work of Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch an