Most people know Franz Kafka for his written works such as
The Metamorphosis
,
The Trial
and
The Castle,
yet he also drew vigorously. Until recently, only 40 of Kafka’s drawings had come to light. When in 2019 a safe deposit box from a vault on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse was opened after years of legal wrangling, it revealed a huge surprise: in addition to manuscripts known to have been deposited there decades ago, were over a hundred previously unseen drawings. Andreas Kilcher, who is making these drawings accessible to the public, talked to us about the unique find and its significance.
The discovery of these drawings has been described as sensational. What in your view makes it so special?
Well, we thought we already knew everything about Kafka, so the fact that so many unseen drawings by a world-famous author have now surfaced is impressive. But to me, the drawings are astonishing too. Many of them are playful and humorous: they show us a much more cheerful side to Kafka.
So the newly discovered drawings are anything but “Kafkaesque”?
That’s not a term I particularly like, as it usually denotes an absurd situation. What we see in Kafka’s drawings is rather the playful and grotesque, the exaggerated and surreal – his sketches are rather like caricatures.
Do you have a favourite drawing?
It’s not easy to pick out one, as I like so many! But my vote would go to
Übermut des Reichtums
(The presumptuousness of wealth
)
, which depicts two clearly wealthy ladies being served giant pheasants on oversized trays, while an orchestra on a stage plays in the background. Here it’s not just the scene which is overexuberant: the sketch also shows the presumptuousness of drawing in itself.
