A Tethered Horse
  • Alfred Kubin
  • Leitmeritz 1877 – 1959 Zwickledt
  • A Tethered Horse, 1952
  • Pen and black ink, coloured wash, on creme paper,
  • signed and inscribed with pen and black ink on the lower right:
    Kubin / s. l. Collegin G. Münter / zum 19. II. 1952
  • 118 × 192 mm
Provenance:
Dr. Hans Konrad Roethel, Munich
(his inscription on the verso, translated:
from a letter by Kubin to Münter / for the 14. II. 1952)

This drawing was a present from Kubin to his lifelong artist colleague Gabriele Münter
for her 75th birthday on February 19 in 1952.

As early as 1911, Alfred Kubin joined the “Blauer Reiter” coalition founded by his artist friend Wassily Kandinsky. At this time, he had already made a name for himself as an illustrator and draughtsman of grotesque-macabre scenes of the soul’s abyss.

However, his visions of doom never entirely suited the group’s concept of a spiritual and formal renewal of art, and Kubin remained all his life an outsider, not only within the “Blauer Reiter.” He had already undertaken a geographic retreat to the castle of Zwickledt near Wernstein am Inn in 1906.

Still, Kubin always took pains to preserve his private contacts to former artistic colleagues, for which this gift drawing provides an impressive testimony.