Fabian Fröhlich | Fantastische Illustrationen | Fantastic Illustrations

Illustrations for “The Outsider” by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, 1992

Two-plate linocuts, 12 x 20 cm each.

“…I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief…”

I discovered Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890 – 1937) in 1985. I was 14, and Lovecraft was the right thing at the right time; within a year I read everything there was (at least in German). “The Outsider” from 1926 (The full text here) has always been one of my favorite stories, I think it’s one the saddest and most disturbing short stories Lovecraft ever wrote.

I made the linocuts during a seminar with Klaus Ensikat (known, for example, as the German illustrator of The Hobbit) at the Kunsthochschule Kassel where I studied Art History, but also had the opportunity to work practically now and then. I used the chance to try things I didn’t do at home, like linocut, etching or drawing from the nude (I am wondering where all these drawings have gone, I am afraid I threw them away, like all the preparatory sketches for paintings – unfortunately).

 

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