”Fertility” (II Version), 1909/10

In the second version of the sheet Fertility, created approximately eight years after Fertility (1st Version), the artist and illustrator Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) once again addresses the theme of the woman giving birth. Surrounded by lush, seemingly unspoiled nature, the figure is presented as a human and world-creating force, although there is also a reduction to her basic sexual conditioning . With this grotesque image, Kubin was responding to the ideas of Otto Weininger (1880–1903), who in his book Sex and Character, published in 1903, characterized women as perpetually receptive beings. On the other hand, the depiction reflects the theories of Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887) who conceived of the mother as a life-giving goddess embedded in a primordial, swamp-like vegetation. His work Das Mutterrecht [Myth, Religion, and Mother Right], published in 1861, shaped fin-de-siècle conceptions of matriarchy and fueled contemporary debates on the ”battle of the sexes” – discourses that also left their mark on Kubin’s art.

AK, 2025