Alfred Kubin: The Aesthetics of Evil

The catalog accompanying the ALBERTINA Museum exhibition presents Alfred Kubin's (1877-1959) view of the world of evil, the predominant theme of his life and work. For him, one of the most outstanding draughtsmen of the 20th century, the aesthetics of evil proved to be the antithesis of the idyll, the deliberate suppression of a hideous reality. Defenseless, he finds himself confronted with uncanny dream phenomena and a pronounced fear of the feminine, sexuality, night and being at the mercy of fate. Trapped in his dark visions, evil is inexhaustible for him and determines his life. Essays by Elisabeth Dutz (ed.), Natalie Lettner and Brigitte Holzinger explore Alfred Kubin's graphic cosmos of the sinister, the iconography of evil, his nightmares and obsessions. The Austrian draughtsman and graphic artist ALFRED KUBIN was born in Leitmeritz in Bohemia in 1877. After traumatic childhood experiences in Zell am See and subsequent mental crises, he began his artistic training in Munich in 1898. He processed his nightmares and obsessions in a large number of fantastic drawings. In 1906, he married and bought a property in Zwickledt near Wernstein am Inn, where he lived until his death in 1959.