The Building of the Temple from Franz Kafka's "Parables and Paradoxes"
1963
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
one from a portfolio of ten lithographs
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1964.8.1662.3
Art Historical Context
"The Building of the Temple" is a lithograph created by Claire Van Vliet in 1963 as part of a portfolio of ten prints inspired by Franz Kafka’s "Parables and Paradoxes." This series translates Kafka’s enigmatic, philosophical tales into visual form, capturing the surreal and introspective quality of his writing through expressive printmaking. Van Vliet, a noted printmaker, uses lithography’s fluid lines and tonal range to evoke the story’s themes of construction, aspiration, and human limitation. As a portfolio work, the piece highlights the mid-20th-century revival of fine art lithography, a...
About the Artist
Claire Van Vliet
Claire Van Vliet (born 1933) is a Canadian-born American printmaker, book artist, and publisher whose career has placed her at the forefront of the fine press and artist's book movement in North America for more than six decades. She studied at the San Diego School of Arts and Crafts and San Diego State University before completing graduate work at Claremont Graduate School in California, where sh...