Franz Kafka’s Tagebücher — Saura 1988

This lithograph is one of 69 works created by Antonio Saura in response to Franz Kafka’s Tagebücher (Diaries), published in 1988 as a limited artist's book. Printed on fine papier vélin Bütten, the image is part of a visual diary where Saura confronts Kafka’s interior world—translating dread, delirium, and bodily disintegration into graphic form.

The composition is sprawling and almost anatomical: limbs, breasts, and faces twist violently into each other, rendered in airbrush-like shadows and urgent black line. A female nude is flattened, pierced by expressive stroke—less a figure than a vessel of anxiety. There is both play and punishment in the way Saura draws here: embracing the grotesque, but with a controlled rhythm. The image splits down the fold of the page, reinforcing its origin in book form—meant to be turned, not framed; lived with, not isolated.

Saura’s engagement with Kafka was not literal, but psychic. This is Kafka’s diary not as narrative, but as nightmare: the artist tapping into an abyss of guilt, repression, absurdity and flesh. The result is one of the most ambitious graphic cycles of the postwar era—less an illustration than a confrontation between two haunted minds.

Technical Sheet
Title: 69 works, Franz Kafka, Tagebücher
Artist / Author: Antonio Saura
Date: 1988
Technique / Printing Method: Lithograph
Medium / Materials: Ink on Bütten paper
Dimensions (cm): 33.5 × 25 × 4.5 cm (volume)
Publisher / Editor: (Not specified — edition from 1988)
Condition: Excellent