Alfred Kubin was a Bohemian printmaker and illustrator who became an important figure of both the Symbolist and Expressionist movements. His inventive black-and-white drawings often featured fantastical or morbid elements, and depicted supernatural creatures and sexual violence. Born on April 10, 1877 in Leitmeritz, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Kubin had an emotionally unstable childhood, attempting suicide and suffering a nervous breakdown before the age of 20. Upon moving to Munich in 1899, he was introduced to the works of Francisco de Goya and Max Klinger, the latter having a particularly profound impact on Kubin. He began producing nightmarish ink-and-wash drawings, and briefly became affiliated with the Russian artist émigré group, the Der Blaue Reiter, which included Wassily Kandinsky and Marianne Werefkin. Kubin was perhaps best known for illustrating the German editions of books by Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky. During rise of Nazism in Germany, his work was considered degenerate; he retreated into solitude and lived in a castle in Zwickledt, Upper Austria. He was awarded the City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts in 1950, and died at his home on August 20, 1959.