Alfred Kubin: Confessions of a Tortured Soul
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Description
Returning to a previous time to find a way through the modern world
The art of the great draftsman, illustrator and author Alfred Kubin, appears more current today than ever before. He lived in a world where humans existed with the threat of violence, war, pandemics, natural disasters, the manipulation of the masses; all of which pervade his highly narrative works. He reaches back to the Greek and Roman mythology to find the relationship between humans and the world they create. The finely drawn images reveal moments of raw emotion and reaction. The oeuvre of this fantastical creator confronts us with pessimistic visions which delineate "the worst of all possible worlds".
The catalogue is the first to attempt an exploration of Kubin's oneiric worlds – which all too often enter nightmarish-somber spheres – in terms of their relation to the unconscious and the deep dimensions of the psyche. In this interpretation attempt, the psychoanalyst and psychiatrist August Ruhs explores Kubin's works selected by curator Hans-Peter Wipplinger. Kubin's works are placed into a dialogue with works by artists of the 19th century and of Classical Modernism from which Kubin derived inspiration.
Kubin's dystopian visualizations, which carry on from Symbolism and the fantastical art of the 19th century and may be considered precursors to French Surrealism, are composed of actual and imaginary reality: an ingenious synthesis, in which the uncanniness of these pessimistic realms is often seasoned with humor, irony and exaggeration.
288 pp. Hardback
24cm x 3.4cm x 28.7cm
1920 g
Published by Walter & Franz Konig (November 2022)
