After a five-month run at the Bodleian Library in Oxford earlier this year, this exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York provides an intimate glimpse into the life of Franz Kafka, marking 100 years since the author’s death (22 November–13 April). Early writing samples and manuscripts of some of his most remarkable texts – including the original version of his 1915 novella The Metamorphosis – are joined by other materials from the Bodleian’s extensive holdings of Kafka-related materials, many of which are being shown in the United States for the first time. This includes photographs, diaries and letters, as well as postcards shared between the author and his sister Ottla while he was in hospital for tuberculosis, the disease that would kill him at 40. Other materials from private and public collections in the United States and Europe reveal Kafka’s influence as a literary figure and the long afterlife of his public image, including a contentious, blue-tinted portrait by Andy Warhol from his 1980 series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.
Find out more from the Morgan’s website.
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A postcard sent by Frank Kafka in December 1918 to his youngest sister, Ottla, depicting ‘Scenes from my life’ (‘Ansichten aus meinem Leben’). Photo: © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Franz Kafka from the Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century series (1980), Andy Warhol. Photo: courtesy Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
The original manuscript for the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, published in 1915.
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford