La Misère Humaine. Album of Six Woodcuts

La Misére Humaine was published by Othon Coubine at his own expense in Paris, in a Czech and French version, complemented by the introductory poem A Father’s Kiss of Otto Klein. In April that same year, the series was published by Herwarth Walden in Der Sturm journal. The artist held an exhibition in Walden’s gallery, whose catalogue notes the now-missing paintings closely associated with the concept of the human figure in the print series (notably the works Rage, Warrior and Pride). These paintings were the height of Coubine’s Cubo-Expressionist treatment of the human body. Although the figures are rendered geometrically, they do not lose their corporality, nor do they offer space for metaphoric imagination regarding form. The title endows the figures with meaning. The print series can be regarded as the story of an awakening individual. The first two sheets introduce the story’s framework, the territory of paradise from which Man „grows“ into his misery. The cycle is the summit of Coubine’s graphic art that shifted after the war towards the drypoint and etching techniques reflecting a Neoclassical idiom.