Eros & Thanatos

Death, this nothingness, is the world's end. — Alfred Kubin

A mourning figure, completely covered by a cloak and hood, with bowed head, in a cemetery in Antwerp.
Recollection

© Roland Krawulsky 2025

An angel guards a stone sarcophagus; next to it, various tombs rise steeply against a dark sky.
Angel of Death II
© Roland Krawulsky 2025
The grim face of death with long hair and deep-set, closed eyes appears lurking behind a tombstone.
Lie in Wait
© Roland Krawulsky 2025
A young woman sits on a gravestone with her hands clasped together, her gaze directed expectantly towards the sky.
Io Credo Risorgerò

© Roland Krawulsky 2025

A female figure holds a florally decorated skull in her hands. Viewed from below against a dark stormy sky.
Memento Mori XV
If you're not getting older, you're dead.
— Tom Petty
© Roland Krawulsky 2024
Erotic grave sculpture. Elegant lady with exposed breasts and gently flowing robe looks towards an open door of a crypt.
The Wake at the Sepulchre
© Roland Krawulsky 2024
Sculpture of death, skull with sinister black eye sockets under hood, skeleton hand, gloomy night sky.
Grim Reaper XV

Mors ultima linea rerum.
— After Horace

© Roland Krawulsky 2023

An androgynous angel, sitting on a sarcophagus, with a dreamy gaze, her head tilted to the side with curly hair.
Pensive v1

© Roland Krawulsky 2023

Sculpture of a grieving young woman with curly long hair, half-bare chest and transparent dress, very graceful and erotic.
Femininity

There is only one real antidote to the anguish engendered in humanity by the awareness of inevitable death: erotic joy.
— Gilles Néret

© Roland Krawulsky 2022

Final hug: A naked man clings to a young woman with bare breasts who is already reaching for the sky.
Skyward
Art is a wound that becomes light.
— Georges Braque
© Roland Krawulsky 2022
Erotic back view of a young woman sitting on a boulder. The robe is lowered to the hips, the head is tilted to the side.
Elegance VIII

© Roland Krawulsky 2022

Angel sculpture: The design of the arms, neck and head is admirable, as is the expression full of suffering from ideal face.
Angel full of Splendor

© Roland Krawulsky 2022

Sculpture of a female nude, lying on a boulder, draped with a rose, expressive eroticism.
Adoration

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
— Edgar Allan Poe

© Roland Krawulsky 2022

Sculpture of a female mourning figure with a shoulder-free dress in front of the false door of a crypt, inviting gesture.
Just Follow Me

© Roland Krawulsky 2022

Man with piercing eyes, frowning face and bony hands, head covered by a hood, leaning on his sword.
The Executor

The charms of horror only intoxicate the strong!
— Charles Baudelaire

© Roland Krawulsky 2021

Sculpture of a young woman wearing an off-the-shoulder dress holding an urn and looking pensive. Very tender and erotic.
Melancholia
© Roland Krawulsky 2021
Two skeletal but still sumptuously dressed abbots in a monastery church serve as a reminder of the transience of life.
Memento Mori VIII

© Roland Krawulsky 2020

An elegiacally dressed woman dreams of heaven. Her body glows with light that emanates from without a direct light source.
Mourning Beauty XII v2
Non omnis moriar …
— Horaz
© Roland Krawulsky 2020
Bronze sculpture of a young lady in a Parisian cemetery, half-closed eyes, slightly open mouth, covered in patina.
Mourning Beauty XI
There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
© Roland Krawulsky 2019
A slender young lady lies with her shoulders bare on the lid of a sarcophagus in a Parisian cemetery.
Graceful II

© Roland Krawulsky 2019

Death, dressed in a robe and hood, but with a clearly visible skull and skeleton, as Atlantean in a French church.
Grim Reaper XII

© Roland Krawulsky 2019

A female angel with bare shoulders and enormous wings has sadly lowered her head onto a monumental gravestone.
Angel full of Beauty

© Roland Krawulsky 2019

The bare-breasted fate strides darkly and inexorably onward, its hands grabbing a boy and a girl by the hair.
Nocturne

© Roland Krawulsky 2019

Death, in the form of a winged skeleton, holds a sleeping, athletic youth in his claws and caresses him.
Kiss of Death

Life is the totality of those functions which resist death.
— Xavier Bichat

© Roland Krawulsky 2018

A woman with one shoulder exposed leans against a sarcophagus with her eyes closed, in front of which lies a funeral wreath.
Solace IV
© Roland Krawulsky 2018
Veiled portrait in a Viennese cemetery with delicate facial features, holding a rose in the right hand.
The Veiled Look II

© Roland Krawulsky 2018

An elderly couple, half-skeletonized, wrestle with each other in a death struggle at a city fountain in Nuremberg.
Scene from a Marriage
© Roland Krawulsky 2018
Adam and the naked Eve are driven out of paradise by a sinister skeleton man with a whip. A wolf howls eerily.
Expulsion from Paradise

@ Roland Krawulsky 2018

Rear view of a slim young woman with bare shoulders and a transparent dress, sitting on a gravestone.
Seduction in Stone
I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.
— Oscar Wilde
© Roland Krawulsky 2018
Death, depicted as a skeleton dressed in a robe and hood, holding a scythe, refers to the transience of earthly endeavors.
Grim Reaper IV
Et in Arcadia ego
Even in Arcadia, there am I
— Proverb
© Roland Krawulsky 2017
An unclothed athletic man kneels desperately in front of the door of a cemetery crypt, trying to gain access.
Missing You
© Roland Krawulsky 2017
Death, as a merciless Grim Reaper, dressed in a robe and hood, his eyes blindfolded, indiscriminately seeks his victim.
Grim Reaper III

My path has led along an abyss, a bottomless depth. I have been forced to jump from stone to stone. The fear of life has accompanied me for as long as I can remember.
— Edvard Munch

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

Monumental burial site with an old man on his deathbed, accompanied by his wife praying for him and a guardian angel.
Farewell II

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

Personified Death stalks us with a sharp gaze from behind his raised robe in a cemetery in Bologna.
Grim Reaper is Watching You

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

A dreaming female angel lies on a gravestone in Genoa, with a colonnade containing more graves in the background.
Dreaming

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

A sleeping young lady with bare shoulders, wearing a tight-fitting dress, holding a crucifix, in a cemetery in Genoa.
Sleeping Beauty

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

Sensually stretched sideways, a woman, depicted in fascinating physicality, vehemently tries to escape rigid death.
Danse Macabre
© Roland Krawulsky 2016
A naked woman kneels with a thoughtful face before a grave cross with a human skull in its center.
Tête-à-Tête

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

Sculpture of a naked young lady in the rain, holding a cloth protectively over her head, made of black patinated bronze.
Black Sun

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
― William Blake

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

Death, dressed in a robe and hood, with a scythe in his bony hand, looks at us head-on with a heavily weathered face.
Grim Reaper II

Manly strength and creative drive
bend like grass to my scythe.
— Proverb

© Roland Krawulsky 2016

A graceful young lady sits with closed eyes and bare shoulders at a grave, holding roses and a funeral wreath in her hands.
Mourning Beauty II
© Roland Krawulsky 2016
Bronze sculpture of a beautiful young woman with a sad, introspective gaze, her head supported by her right hand.
Mourning Beauty

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

© Roland Krawulsky 2015

A snake winds its way out of the left eye socket of a human skull lying on a gravestone in a Nuremberg cemetery.
Skull & Snake

I'm often asked why I so often choose death, transience and the grave as the subject of my paintings. To live forever, one must often surrender to death.
— Caspar David Friedrich

© Roland Krawulsky 2015

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