Austin Osman Spare(December 30, 1886 - May 15, 1956) was an English artist and magician. He was the son of a London policeman. As a child, he showed an affinity for art, and he briefly attended an art school. At the age of 13, he left school to …

In the words of an obituary, ‘Strange and Gentle Genius Dies’ in the London Evening News, “You have probably never heard of Austin Osman Spare. But his should have been a famous name.” Spare was born near Smithfield Market in 1886, the son of a policeman, and spent his later childhood and youth in Kennington.

01/05/2017 · Austin Osman Spare, a British outsider artist who died in the 1950s, was also the grandfather of Chaos Magick. Here’s more about his bizarre and often disturbing life. Austin Osman Spare (1886—1956) was an English artist—and practicing occultist. He was also the inventor of many of the techniques that would later be dubbed chaos magick.

One final mythic twist in the life of Austin Osman Spare came in 1936, when he apparently rejected the chance of international fame and recognition, in favour of living a humble life with his adopted cats. When a member of the German Embassy bought one of his paintings, he later gifted it to Adolf Hitler.

Austin Osman Spare Austin Spare is an example of a trained artist who nevertheless inhabited the kind of psychological fringe place more usually …