Alfred Kubin

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Alfred Kubin is one of the most accomplished draughtsmen of visions of the 20th century. Born in 1877 at Leitmeritz in Bohemia, Kubin spent his youth and years of study at the School of Applied Arts in Salzburg. He later studied art and took drawing lessons in Munich. Inspired by his fascination with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and influenced artistically by Goya, Klinger, Ensor, Redon, Rops and Munch, Kubin first found his own idiosyncratic "Kubinesque" set of motifs, rooted in dream visions, at the turn of the last century. He called his imagery a vital "escape into the unreal": ghostly figures, hybrid creatures, variants of torture and self-torture, dream, vampirism, spiritualism, decadence, sex, death and birth. His extraordinary oeuvre comprises more than 20,000 drawings, a large part of it pen drawings and portfolio pieces as well as illustrations for more than 70 books, all of them testifying to his gloomy world view. This book features a representative selection of master sheets by the bizarre multi-talented artist.