Franz Kafka

This was the first portrait I attempted using just paints and a palette knife on unstretched canvas. It’s a looser style than my normal portraits and the subject looks trapped in the picture. It’s definitely Franz Kafka – though it might also be the lead singer of 80s Manchester band A Certain Ratio – and was influenced by the biography of Kafka by Nicholas Murray. I had done a short comic book style précis of Kafka’s life for The Guardian and Murray’s wife asked for a print. I printed it out for him then filed it away somewhere. The guilt of not sending the print started to get to me, hence my desire to paint Kafka. I didn’t like the idea of trapping him in a frame, though, which is why it hangs on clothes pegs.

So the painting was influenced by my knowledge of the existence of Murrays book, rather than my knowledge of the text. Although the painting was completed in half an hour in 2007, I only started reading book last summer – sitting by the pool in France regaling my family with facts about Kafka.

2007 © Tim Bradford