Franz Kafka and Andy Warhol Hotel

The name and life of writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924) is inseparably connected to Prague, Prague was his home and inspiration. The symbiosis of Kafka's life and his work with Prague is well-known and all aspects of this fatal bond have been studied during decades of Kafkian research.

In 1885 Franz Kafka briefly lived near Hotel Jalta, at 56 Wenceslas Square. In 1907 he started to work at the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali at 19 Wenceslas Square (today the office building of the Flow East company which owns Hotel Jalta) as his first employment as an insurance clerk. Wenceslas Square was then where Franz Kafka appeared every day and today you can also get around it. All you have to do is to step out of the door of Hotel Jalta and onto Wenceslas Square, with its historical links, only a few steps from where Franz Kafka used to live and work.

So it is no surprise that the management of Hotel Jalta decided with great pleasure to exhibit in the hotel lobby one of Warhol's original reproductions of his limited edition as a tribute to the personality and literary work of Franz Kafka. Andy Warhol, like us, recognized the personality, thinking and renowned literary works of Franz Kafka.

It is one of ten portraits of famous Jews, published by the American painter, graphic artist, and filmmaker of Ruthenian origin (today’s Slovakia), a leading figure of so-called "pop-art", Andy Warhol in 1980. These are the portraits of important and influential Jewish people of their time, for example, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Gertrude Stein, Martin Buber and others and you can admire the portrait of Franz Kafka in our hotel lobby.