Icarus over the Vitosha Mountains, October 1980

About the Work

This watercolour depicts Icarus plunging to the earth over the Vitosha massif. According to the ancient myth, the young man had recklessly flown too close to the sun with his waxen wings. Bulgaria (ancient Thrace) was also home to the gladiator Spartacus, whose slave uprising of 73 BC threatened the Roman Empire. Tübke’s combination of the two levels of meaning was already interpreted early on as a premonition of the failure of the Socialist utopia.