The Lion Hunt
  • Alfred Kubin
  • Leitmeritz 1877 – 1959 Zwickledt
  • The Lion Hunt, before 1922
  • Pen with black and brown ink, coloured wash, framing lines with pen and ink, on a cadastral plan
  • signed on the lower right: AKubin (attached), inscribed on the lower left: Die Löwenjagd (the lion hunt)
  • 268 × 355 mm
Provenance:
Serge Sabarsky, New York (exh. cat. 1970, ill. 21)
Collection H. u. H. Goedeckemeyer, Frankfurt
Collection Zevi, Milan
Private collection, Milan (until 2013)
Exhibition:
Göttingen 1980, The university art collection, Alfred Kubin, cat. no. 32
Bolzano 1991, Museo d‘Arte Moderna: Il sogno rivela la natura delle cose, no. 90, ill. p. 120
Milan 2003/04, Fondazione Antonio Monzetta: Il Cavaliere Azzuro, no. 61, ill. p. 205
Siena 2008/09, Complesso Museale Santa Maria della Scala: La lente di Freud, una galleria dell‘inconscio, ill. p. 250

Kubin used the reverse side of an old cadastral plan from his father’s collections for this image as well.

As on the previous sheet, Kubin presents the event here from the perspective of the predators in the foreground. There, two lionesses must restlessly witness how a horde of hunters in the background threatens a male with spears. The dark-skinned attackers wear turbans without exception. A cart is already pulling up in the distant barren landscape to collect the quarry. On the ground, a small lizzard flees from the unequal struggle. Kubin likewise issued this drawing as an lithograph (Fig. 1). The sheet belonged to a portfolio of an annual edition for the circle of graphic artists and collectors in Leipzig from 1922.