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ALFRED KUBIN
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ALFRED KUBIN
DRAWINGS 1897–1909
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Edited by Annegret Hoberg

With contributions by

Annegret Hoberg, Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Peter Assmann, Andreas Geyer,

Werner Hofmann, and Olaf Peters

Printed by Prestel in Germany

Published in association with Neue Galerie New York

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This catalogue has been published in conjunction with the exhibition

Alfred Kubin • Drawings 1897–1909
Neue Galerie New York, September 25, 2008–January 26, 2009

Edited on behalf of Neue Galerie New York by Annegret Hoberg

Director of Publications: Scott Gutterman
Project Manager: Janis Staggs
Text Editor: Audrey Walen
Translations: Steven Lindberg
Design: Pandiscio Co./William Loccisano
Project Coordination: Anja Besserer
Production: Florian Tutte
Image Origination: Reproline Mediateam, Munich
Printing and Binding: TBB, Banská Bystrica, Slovakia

Transport with the kind support of

Printed by Prestel in Germany on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

© 2008 Neue Galerie New York; the Authors
© 2008 Prestel Verlag, Munich Berlin London New York

www.prestel.com

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Tel. +1 (212) 995-2720, Fax +1 (212) 995-2733

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008930738

ISBN 978-3-7913-4094-4

PAGE 3: Alfred Kubin, Im Mittelpunkt der Erde (In the Center of the Earth), 1900-01. Private Collection, New York
PAGE 5: Alfred Kubin, 1898. Photo: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Alfred Kubin, detail from Selbstbetrachtung (Self-Observation), ca. 1901-02. Albertina, Vienna
PAGE 11: Alfred Kubin, detail from Der Gekrönte (The Crowned), 1903.
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the following people who have contributed to making this a successful project:
Theo Bleckmann, New York
Paul Chapman, New York
Cynthia Chin, New York
Kathy Curry, New York
Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, Stein
Richard L. Feigen, New York
Ulrike Hammad, Erlangen
Jodi Hauptmann, New York
Margarete Heck, Vienna
Catherine Heroy, New York
Antonia Hoerschelmann, Vienna
Ingrid Kastel, Vienna
Elizabeth S. Kujawski, New York
Michael Lesh, New York
Steven Lindberg, Berlin
Françoise Newman, New York
Monika Oberchristl, Linz
Vlasta Odell, New York
Dorothee von Prittwitz, London
Karola Rattner, Munich
Sabine Rewald, New York
Jerry Rivera, New York
Gudrun Stangl-Gorisek, Vienna
Michael and Judy Steinhardt, New York
Federico de Vera, New York
Madeline Weinrib, New York
Thekla Weissengruber, Linz
Stefan Winter, Munich
Agnieszka Wojdylo, New York
Harry Zernike, New York
Tom Zoufaly, New York

Special thanks to Jerome Weinrib of ABC Carpet & Home, New York,
for his extremely generous support of the exhibition,
and to Jakob Guttmann of Guttmann Picture Frames, New York.
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CONTENTS

10 54
RONALD S. LAUDER AND RENÉE PRICE PETER ASSMANN
Foreword Artistic Sources for Another Modernism
Alfred Kubin and His Visual Work
12
ANNEGRET HOBERG 68
Alfred Kubin ANDREAS GEYER
The Early Work up to 1909 “…perhaps I am a writer…”
Alfred Kubin as Literary Figure
40
KLAUS ALBRECHT SCHRÖDER 94
Alfred Kubin; or, The Cruelty of Images WERNER HOFMANN
The “Other Side” of Modernity

106
OLAF PETERS
Demons of Dust
Alfred Kubin between Viennese Modernism
and Conservative Revolution
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122
Plates

208
Checklist

214
Biography

227
Index of Names

230
Photograph and Copyright Credits
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FOREWORD

One of the signal achievements of modern thought is the recognition, primarily by Sigmund Freud, of the unconscious. It is this
shadow world—of unguarded impulses, of primal wishes and fears—that the artist Alfred Kubin masterfully explores. His mysterious
drawings are rooted in a firm command of the draughtsman’s art. By marrying refined technique with unbridled fantasy often
inspired by literature, Kubin brings to life startling visions from “the other side,” as his most famous book is named. They have,
at once, the evanescence and the frightening clarity of our darkest dreams.

We are pleased to thank curator Annegret Hoberg of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, who organized the
exhibition and who brings both scholarly depth and a discerning eye to her subject. She has assembled a superior group of works
on paper by Kubin, allowing us to see the artist afresh. Her essay provides valuable historical background and locates Kubin
firmly within his cultural milieu.

The esteemed catalogue authors—in addition to Dr. Hoberg, these were Peter Assmann, Andreas Geyer, Werner Hofmann, Olaf
Peters, and Klaus Albrecht Schröder—have all investigated important aspects of Kubin’s life and art. We thank them for contributing
to a more complete understanding of this complex artist.

We felt it was essential that Kubin be given a proper setting for his art. Toward that end, we welcomed the contributions of Federico
de Vera, who conceived of the superb installation design, and Richard Pandiscio and William Loccisano of Pandiscio Co., who brought
their usual elegance to the creation of the exhibition catalogue. Alessandra Comini, art historian and musicologist extraordinaire,
selected the music that is an integral part of the exhibition. Our deepest thanks to all these individuals for their efforts.

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all the lenders from Europe and the United States, who have generously supported
this exhibition. I wish to thank Helmut Friedel, Director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus; Peter Assmann, Director of
the Oberösterreichische Landesmuseen, Linz; Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Director of the Albertina, Vienna; Count Anton-Wolfgang
von Faber-Castell, Chairman and CEO of Faber Castell AG; Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of
Art; Glenn Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Richard Nagy, London; as well as several private lenders.

The Neue Galerie staff, including Scott Gutterman, deputy director; Sefa Saglam, director of exhibitions and registrar; Janis
Staggs, assistant curator; Geoffrey Burns and Michael Voss, preparators; Leah Ammon, publications assistant; and Sophie
Mikes, assistant to the registrar, deserve recognition for their commitment to realizing this exhibition.

Although well-known in Austria and Germany, Kubin is rarely cited as a major artist in the United States. We are pleased to offer
the first large-scale Kubin exhibition in this country in hopes of rectifying that oversight. These works reveal an artist of great
subtlety and coiled power, one who is sure to provide inspiration to a vast new audience of viewers.

Ronald S. Lauder Renée Price

President, Neue Galerie New York Director, Neue Galerie New York

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1. Alfred Kubin, “Das Leben ist ein Traum! Träume glücklich! Dein Bruder Alfred” (Life is a dream! Dream happily! Your brother, Alfred), ca. 1897.
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv

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ANNEGRET HOBERG

Alfred Kubin
The Early Work up to 1909

Alfred Kubin was born on April 10, 1877, in Leitmeritz, on the Elbe River in northern
Bohemia; now part of the Czech Republic, at the time it belonged to Austria. But even
before his second birthday, his family had moved to the center of Austria: first to Salzburg
and then a little later to Zell am See, where Kubin spent the majority of his childhood
and youth. His father, Friedrich Franz Kubin, was an “imperial and royal senior geometer”—
that is to say, a surveyor for the Dual Monarchy, active in the service of the state and
frequently away in distant parts of the empire on the Danube. He returned to Salzburg
from an extended stay in Dalmatia working as a surveyor two years after Kubin’s birth,
and met his young son for the first time: “My mother and I had just settled ourselves
comfortably in our new home when one fine day this, to me unwelcome, character
broke in upon us.” Thanks to a present, “my jealousy abated, and we achieved an uneasy
truce.”1 But even as a child, the conflict with his dominant and often cruel father, who
soon considered his nonconformist son a good-for-nothing, grew worse. The son was
a failure in school who preferred to roam, largely unsupervised, through the barns, stalls,
and fishermen’s huts of their small mountain town; he had plenty of opportunity to do
so, as his mother suffered from tuberculosis and was frequently confined to bed.

When Kubin was ten, his mother died. The experience of her death left a lasting
impression on the son. His father then married Kubin’s aunt and his mother’s sister,
but she died in childbirth a year later. Young Alfred grew more and more distant from
his family; for all the outward uneventfulness of their petit bourgeois existence, he
lived out his fantasies of sadism and catastrophes: “and in my heart I felt only hate,
hate, hate toward my father and all men.”2 Around this time Kubin, still a child, was
seduced by an older, pregnant woman: “There is only one essential point I must touch
on here. I was just eleven and a half years old when I became involved in sexual play
with an older woman, something that excited me tremendously and cast its shadows
as far as my early manhood.”3

Kubin went to secondary school in Salzburg, though after two years he had flunked
out and was sent back to his parental home in Zell am See; a visit to the school of

13
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arts and crafts ended similarly. In the meanwhile his father again married, this time
to a young woman from Klagenfurt, and sent his son, now fifteen, to be an apprentice
photographer with an “uncle” by marriage to Klagenfurt, the provincial capital of
Carinthia in eastern Austria. The adolescent Kubin, who was going through puberty
and beset by internal crises, did not learn much in the large studio of his master, the
landscape photographer Alois Beer, but the many photographs that his uncle brought
back from his frequent travels left a lasting impression on the apprentice. “I must say
that these four years, which I spent amid many thousands of pictures, greatly enhanced
my appreciation of landscapes. The sea, Italy, the Orient—things that I had never
actually seen—left an accurate and enduring impression on my mind, an imperishable,
ideal standard.”4 Kubin was nineteen and in the fourth year of his apprenticeship
when, after a heated scene with colleagues, with his nerves completely overexcited,
he decided to commit suicide at his mother’s grave, traveling from Klagenfurt to Zell
am See for that purpose. But, as the artist’s first autobiography of 1911 describes
it, the rusty pistol failed: “I lacked the moral strength to try again. I became wretchedly
sick.”5 His father sent him back to the apprenticeship, but his uncle dismissed him
the same day. Having failed at every attempt at education thus far, the young Kubin
volunteered for the army as a last resort. Because of his weak constitution, he was
accepted only with hesitation, and just a few weeks later he suffered a severe nervous
breakdown during a funeral ceremony for a division commander and spent four
months in the army hospital in Graz. After this drastic health crisis, his father finally
2. Friedrich Franz Kubin, the father of the artist, took him back into the parental home amicably.
1885. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
Munich, Kubin-Archiv Numerous of his statements testify that from childhood Kubin drew frequently and
played with colored pencils; three of his childhood drawings are now in museums
[see Figs. 1, 2, pp. 54, 56].6 Presumably around 1897, around the age of twenty and
living at home without an occupation, Kubin dedicated a small drawing with fairy tale
motifs to his sister Friederike (Fritzi): “Das Leben ist ein Traum! Träume glücklich!
Dein Bruder Alfred” (Life is a dream! Dream happily! Your brother, Alfred) [Fig. 1]. It
is close in style to a pen-and-ink drawing with watercolor, Geisternacht (Night of
Ghosts), which was probably done in Munich shortly after his move from Zell am See
soon thereafter [see Fig. 1, p. 94 ]. The slight overtone of melancholy in this wish,
expressed almost desperately, is also communicated in the image of two small dream
knights who are kneeling before a flower fairy amid the stalks of a meadow. “Life is
a dream! Nothing seems more apt to me than this allegory!” the mature Kubin began
his important essay Über mein Traumerleben (On my dream experience) of 1922.
With this quotation, he took up a leitmotif of intellectual Austria that can be found in
the literary work of, among others, Franz Grillparzer, who made reference to Pedro
Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño (Life is a dream). It is remarkable that this
prevailing mood of the end of the nineteenth century, which was expressed in various
ways in the work of Georg Trakl, Arthur Schnitzler, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal as
well, was mentioned here by the young and poorly educated Kubin.

Neither he nor the public had any notion yet of the dreams that would soon be revealed

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in Kubin’s early work, in images never seen before, which in turn held up a mirror to
the anxieties and neuroses of the modern psyche much like, albeit in a different way,
Sigmund Freud’s Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams), which was published
about this time as well. The important thing to note is that throughout his life Kubin’s
art would draw on the autobiographical experiences of his youth: in the early work
drawing primarily from impressions of traumatic experiences, in his later years
increasingly from impressions of images and moods that stayed with him all his life.

Among the numerous other strands of his certainly complicated childhood traumas,
Kubin’s father complex stands out. His relationship to his overpowering, punitive
father, who at the same time seemed to the young Kubin like the epitome of male
strength and handsomeness [Fig. 2], left its mark in many early sheets in motifs of
power and its counterparts: powerlessness, helpless subjection, and ruination, among
other things.7 Kubin’s early literary expressions also deal with this set of problems,
from the legendary fragment “Der Sohn als Weltenwanderer” (The son as world
wanderer) to Patera, the mysterious, unpredictable ruler of the dream city in his novel
Die andere Seite (The Other Side) of 1909.8 In drawings around 1899-1900, such
as Aus meinem Reich (From My Realm) [Cat. no. 31], the profound father complex
is translated into a kind of Freudian psychoanalytic picture puzzle whose
contemporaneity is strangely reinforced by the two observers in the foreground in
modern, urban clothing. They are standing at a kind of demolition of the world to
which “the son,” a kind of geriatric embryo, appears to be fastened by suction cups, 3. Alfred Kubin in the first year of his residence
while behind him “the father” floats in the cosmic void as a giant, blown-up, indifferent in Munich, 1898. Städtische Galerie im
phantom, serving as a backdrop to its offspring while condemning it to the impossibility Lenbachhaus, Munich, Kubin-Archiv

of independent development. In Aus meinem Reich, as in the drawing Vater und Sohn
(Father and Son) [Cat. no. 4], from approximately the same period, the modern
contemporaneity of the figures’ clothing represents an absolute exception in Kubin’s
early work. In the latter case a dandyish son is “milking” coins into a cylinder from
the long hair of the old man, whose physiognomy makes him seem still powerful.
The theme is the problem of financial independence and the lack of respect from
his father that plagued Kubin throughout his youth.

On the advice of a family friend, Kubin’s father finally allowed his son Alfred, despite
previous failed attempts at education, to go to Munich to study art, financed with a
small inheritance from his grandparents. “I went off blithely in the spring of 1898 to
Munich, where I rented a small room and entered the private school of the late
Schmidt-Reutte”9 [Fig. 3].

FIRST YEARS IN MUNICH:

THE VIEW INTO THE “CHAMBER OF HORRORS” OPENS UP
In Munich, Kubin first spent a year attending the private drawing class of Ludwig
Schmidt-Reutte, which was popular at the time; then for several months beginning
in May 1899 he attended sporadically Nikolaus Gysis’s drawing class at the art
academy.10 But, like many other artists from an incipient avant-garde, Kubin was

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4. Alfred Kubin, Alltagsmusik (Everyday Music), 1898-99. Private Collection

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not satisfied to draw heads and nudes in the traditional style. He was also extremely Top: 5. Max Klinger, Ängste (Anxieties),
from the cycle Paraphrase über den Fund eines
unnerved by a visit to the Alte Pinakothek, where, by his own account, he saw good
Handschuhs (Paraphrase on the Finding of a
art for the first time in the Old Master paintings there. Increasingly frustrated and Glove), 1882
disoriented, apparently he withdrew in 1899 through reading philosophical works
Bottom: 6. Max Klinger, Entführung (Abduction),
by Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, who reinforced his pessimistic
from the cycle Paraphrase über den Fund eines
worldview, and attempted his first text, the above-mentioned “Der Sohn als Handschuhs (Paraphrase on the Finding of a
Weltenwanderer.” “This febrile and tumultuous period came to an end with a severe Glove), 1882
inflammation of the throat that kept me in my room for a number of days. During that
time I drew a great deal and managed to get down on paper spectral inspirations
and caricatures that corresponded exactly with my wretched state.”11 Die Menschen
tanzen gerne (People Like to Dance) [Cat. no. 1] and Die Angst (Fear) [Cat. no. 5] are

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good examples of this first group of Kubin’s autonomous works. They are ironic or
grotesque, often Biedermeier-like pen-and-ink drawings in a naive, caricatural style
that presents human drives and fears, social deformations, and the relationship
between the sexes in ever-new variants. In Die Menschen tanzen gerne, a closely
embracing bourgeois couple whose lower bodies have already turned to skeletons
is dancing shamelessly to music played by gnomes in old-fashioned uniforms.
Grotesque, animalistic hybrid figures with phallically distended body parts and a
female figure accompany with obscene gestures this dance to the weakness of the
flesh and human vanities. Alltagsmusik (Everyday Music) is also related to these
works in terms of style and motif, though here the elements have been exaggerated
into the fantastic, with the corpse of a pregnant woman stabbed to death and hung
and a demimondaine who has hiked up her skirt, causing the head of a lustful onlooker
to separate from his body [Fig. 4].

Alltagsmusik may already postdate the crucial initial artistic experience that for Kubin,
more than for any other artist, took the concrete form of a sudden psychological
phenomenon and opened the gates to his specific form of creativity, allowing the
enormous flood of images of visions behind it to break free. When Kubin was lying
in bed with that sore throat, a friend visited him and also saw his new works:12

7. Alfred Kubin, Die Leiche des Gefolterten He said they reminded him in many respects of [Max] Klinger’s engravings, which
(The Corpse of the Tortured Man), 1899.
he strongly recommended to me as examples. And so as soon as I was well
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich,
Kubin-Archiv enough I sought out his collection of copperplates and saw the series called Fund
eines Handschuhs [Finding of a glove]. I looked, and quivered with delight. Here
a whole new art was thrown open to me, which offered free play for the imaginative
expression of every conceivable world of feeling. Before putting the engravings
away I swore that I would dedicate my life to the creation of similar works.13

That passage is followed by the famous and oft-cited one in Kubin’s autobiography
that describes how he visited a variety theater in an excited state after seeing Klinger’s
cycle of etchings Ein Handschuh of 1881–82 in the Graphische Sammlung in Munich,
and experienced a kind of hallucinatory attack of artistic imagination:

I grew moody, although at the same time I was filled with an unfamiliar sensation
of well-being, and I thought again of Klinger’s engravings and reflected upon the
course of my future work. And now I was suddenly inundated with visions of pictures
in black and white—it is impossible to describe what a thousand-fold treasure my
imagination poured out before me. Quickly I left the theater, for the music and the
mass of lights now disturbed me, and I wandered aimlessly in the dark streets,
overcome and literally ravished by a dark power that conjured up before my mind
strange creatures, houses, landscapes, grotesque and frightful situations.14

A subsequent passage clearly demonstrates just how preoccupied Kubin was with
the graphic works of Klinger and others in the period that followed: “Once home, I

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8. Alfred Kubin, Mein Dämon (My Demon),

1899-1900. Staatliche Graphische Sammlung,
Munich

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sank into bed like a dead man and slept soundly and dreamlessly until toward evening
of the next day. In the time that followed I stayed very much by myself. I finished whole
series of India-ink drawings; I made myself acquainted with the collected artworks
of Klinger, Goya, de Groux, Rops, Munch, Ensor, Redon, and similar artists, who in
turn became my favorites and who exercised an occasional though unconscious
influence on me.”15

Quite evidently, Klinger’s autobiographical cycle about the confusions of a young

man in love, whose second printing of 1882 was titled Paraphrase über den Fund
eines Handschuhs (Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove),16 depicted psychological
events with an innovative, sharp realism on the one hand and completely surreal
symbolism of objects on the other that showed the path by which Kubin found his
9. Alfred Kubin, Das Grausen (The Horror),
1900-01. Leopold Collection, Vienna true purpose during his early creative period. It is significant that he was particularly
inspired by the two motifs in the cycle with “psychoanalytic material,” such as sheet
seven with its nightmarish Ängste (Anxieties) [Fig. 5] and Entführung (Abduction)
[Fig. 6]. Kubin responded to the “abduction” of the glove by a bat that has mutated
into a hideous hybrid with his drawing Nachtmotten (Nocturnal Moths). 17 As if
suddenly a veil had been pulled away from a world of dark emotional states lurking
in the unconscious when Klinger’s etchings showed him a way to render psychological
processes subtly in drawings; images became manifest for Kubin that evoked in
completely new symbols his ideas of anxieties and urges, overpowering forces,
sexual drives, and ruin.

What they depicted opened up for the first time in the medium of art a prospect into
the subconscious, and viewers seeing them felt confronted mysteriously and
mercilessly with their own anxieties, desires, and urges. Their effect on his
contemporaries was like a shock, and in the press reviews and articles on the artist
that began to appear from 1901 onward, they were often described as “chambers
of horror.” Apparently this crucial turning point occurred in autumn 1899. From that
point on, Kubin created hundreds of such images in a genuine exhilaration of creativity.
His initial inspiration for how to turn his visions into art derived not only from Klinger
but also from Francisco Goya and later from Félicien Rops.

For example, in works such as Der geplagte Mensch (Tortured Man) [Cat. no. 10]
and Die Leiche des Gefolterten (The Corpse of the Tortured Man) [Fig. 7], we are
reminded of Goya’s torturers and the cruel, unforgettable scenes of torment and
violation from the Spanish war that he depicted in the Desastres de la guerra (Disasters
of War) cycle of etchings begun in 1810. Especially for the techniques of the early
works, Kubin clearly turned to Goya and Klinger as models. With his carefully rendered
pen drawings with wash and his unusual use of a screened spray technique to shade
in the dark brown or gray backgrounds, the young artist attempted to imitate the
effect of the earlier artists’ aquatint etchings and their refined chiaroscuro effects
10. Alfred Kubin, Gefahr (Danger), 1900-01. in his own ink drawings. Nearly all the drawings of his “classic” early period from
Leopold Collection, Vienna 1899 to 1903 are, moreover, outlined with a precisely drawn border that also

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underscores the aim to achieve visual completeness. Kubin added careful handwritten 11. Alfred Kubin, Der Krieg (War), 1901-02.
titles to many of them. All these things show that he worked carefully despite the Whereabouts unknown

ecstatic attacks of his visions.18 There are also many clearly self-portrait-like works,
such as the sheet Sterben (Dying) [Cat. no. 3], with its emaciated, prematurely old
artist on his deathbed, above whom a hallucination of terrible brightness appears.
Or in the drawing Mein Dämon (My Demon), probably the most radical of the early
self-portraits: Kubin is shown working obsessively on the lower edge, while above
his head two enormous nude human bodies rise in the “halo of genius” of the
traditional allegory of the artist; at top they deform into the doubled head of the
draftsman, now distorted by fantastic madness and grown out of control. The mixing
and exchange of male and female features, as well as the ax in one hand, point to
a battle between the sexes that is as terrible as it is irreconcilable, playing out in the
head of the work’s creator [Fig. 8].

THE PINNACLE OF THE EARLY WORK, 1900–01 TO 1904

Kubin’s life in Munich was not simply that of a secluded, crisis-plagued draftsman;
he was also increasingly included in the animated world of artists in Schwabing,
Munich’s bohemian quarter, making friends with fellow students and joining the

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12. Hans von Weber in his Munich residence, Sturmfackel (Storm torch) circle of artists whose members included Ernst Stern,
1902. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Alexander Salzmann, Albert Weisgerber, Gino Finetti, and Rudolf Levy, and which
Munich, Kubin-Archiv
met at Café Elite on Schellingstrasse.19 Moreover, the Sturmfackel group had contacts
through Ernst Stern and Emil Mantel to the then-famous cabaret stage Elf Scharfrichter
(Eleven executioners), as well as to another circle of artists at Café Stefanie, a central
meeting point for such literary figures as Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey, Roda
Roda, and Eduard Graf von Keyserling. Kubin’s works, with their riveting “embodiments
of the uncanny, intangible powers that dominate us,” became a furtively spread insiders’
tip in these artists’ circles. Thanks to such contacts, including Otto Julius Bierbaum,
the editor of the journal Die Insel, who had only recently moved from Berlin to Munich,
Kubin had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Paul Cassirer in Berlin in winter
1901–02, which evidently included a very large number of his works from the previous
two years. To judge from the comments in the press, it was especially the scenes of
torture and the erotic depictions that caused a sensation and triggered outrage, much
as they had in Munich. Not long before the exhibition, Kubin had met one of the crucial,
great patrons of his early years: “As I was drinking my black coffee one autumn evening
in 1901, at Café Stefanie, a famous meeting point for artists in Munich, a broad-
shouldered man with dark brown hair and a Nero-like profile stood up at the next

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table, where Wedekind, Max Halbe, and Count E[duard] v. Keyserling were sitting,
introduced himself to me as Hans von Weber, and immediately asked if he could visit
me to see more of my works, which he greatly admired.”20 A friendship soon developed
Top: 13. Alfred Kubin, Die grosse Babylon
between the young, inexperienced, and depressive artist and the vital, cosmopolitan
(The Great Whore of Babylon), 1901-02.
Hans von Weber, who at this time was leading the life of a generous bon vivant. Just Private Collection
a few weeks after they met, von Weber was already apparently planning to publish
Bottom: 14. Alfred Kubin, Der Todessprung
a portfolio of prints based on Kubin’s drawings, and by May 1902 had established a
(The Death Leap), 1901-02. Private Collection
complete list of titles of the fifteen drawings selected, including Das Grausen (The
Horror) [Fig. 9] and Der Krieg (War) [Fig. 11]. The art historian Christoph Brockhaus
has identified a literary model for Das Grausen, in which a horrifying grinning skull
on a long neck of towering waves rises up with an eyeball swollen into an enormous
bubble against the doomed victims of a shipwreck. Like his drawing Gefahr (Danger)
[Fig. 10], it is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” but
it is his own invention—the gruesome manifestation of a messenger of death, which
causes the viewer’s blood to curdle—that dominates the events like a triumphant
symbol of destruction. The subject of Gefahr, with its monstrous, grotesque giant
figure and its hands drawn with a crude, primitive, almost child-like precision, also
left a deep impression on Kubin’s contemporaries. Ferdinand Avenarius, in an article
titled “Traum-Bildnerei” from 1903, wrote of Kubin’s immediate, gripping works: “That
is even more true of the drawing Gefahr, with its immense hands growing up at the
viewer—every one of us has dreamed something similar a hundred times, but how
few of us have tried to depict it!”21 Der Krieg, whose original drawing is now lost,
became the most famous print in the Weber portfolio: a martial male body with a
butcher’s knife in its hand, leaning back in the weight of its stride. Richard Schaukal
described it thus: “Its pitiless face hushed in the immense brass helmet, stomping
the armies with its giant feet, which sink like hundredweights”22 [Fig. 11].

It took over a year to produce the Weber portfolio. Weber predicted enormous success
and sent brochures to Mr. Rockefeller, Cardinal Rampolla, and Grand Duke Vladimir,
among others. The production of each section of the portfolio was celebrated, so
that the work had at least ten publication parties.23 In the end it was published in

AN N EG R ET HOB E RG 23
UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE

Annegret Hoberg
Alfred Kubin
Drawings 1897-1910

Gebundenes Buch mit Schutzumschlag, 232 Seiten, 23,5 x 28,5 cm

100 farbige Abbildungen, 109 s/w Abbildungen
ISBN: 978-3-7913-4094-4

Prestel

Erscheinungstermin: September 2008