Aby Warburg photo

Aby Warburg

Aby Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, which was later moved to the Warburg Institute, London. At the heart of his research was the legacy of the classical world, and the transmission of classical representation, in the most varied areas of Western culture through to the Renaissance.

Warburg described himself as: "Amburghese di cuore, ebreo di sangue, d'anima Fiorentino" ('Hamburger at heart, Jew by blood, Florentine in spirit').


“The few weeks I have had at my disposal have not given me the chance to revive and to work through my old memories in such a way that I might offer you a solid introduction into the psychic life of Indians.”
Aby Warburg
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“All well — from the neck down.”
Aby Warburg
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“By associating votive offerings with sacred images, the Catholic Church, it its wisdom, had left its formerly pagan flock a legitimate outlet for the inveterate impulse to associate oneself, or one's own effigy, with the Divine as expressed in the palpable form of the human image.”
Aby Warburg
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