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ONLINECOLLECTION

The City Towards the East, 1903/04

Leopold Museum,
Vienna
India ink, pen, watercolor, spray technique on paper
24.5×30.3 cm

Artists

  • Alfred Kubin

    (Litoměřice 1877–1959 Zwickledt)

Unfortunately not on display at the moment
The draftsman Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) noted the title The City Towards the East in fine pencil writing on the left margin of the graphic work. Dark masses of clouds are gathering over a city, depicted on the horizon and located in an infinitely wide, empty landscape. In the midst of simple, rectangular houses with deep windows and doors, a minaret-like tower is rising into the ominously fogged sky. The mysterious settlement at whose outskirts we are looking has been thrust to the right edge of the picture. The empty plane of a wasteland extends in front of it – and at its center a stooped figure in a cassock-like garment with a long train is heading towards the abandoned city, leaning on a stick and dragging itself forward in a laborious, hunchbacked effort. Where is Kubin taking us? To the much-cited “distant land”, an unsettling landscape of the soul, a place of longing or a distressing, alien world?

Object data

Artist/author
  • Alfred Kubin
Title
The City Towards the East
Date
1903/04
Art movement
Symbolism
Category
Graphic work
Material​/technique
India ink, pen, watercolor, spray technique on paper
Dimensions
24.5×30.3 cm
Signature
Signed lower right: AKubin; designated lower left: Die Stadt gen Osten
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna, Inv. 1019
Inventory access
Contributed to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994
Selection of Reference works
  • Alfred Kubin. Bekenntnisse einer gequälten Seele, hrsg. von Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Köln 2022 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 16.04.2022–24.07.2022).
  • Alfred Kubin. Aus meinem Reich. Meisterblätter aus dem Leopold Museum, hrsg. von Rudolf Leopold/Romana Schuler, Wien 2002 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 05.10.2002-06.01.2003).
Keywords

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Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i

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