Head of Franz Kafka, Kinetic sculpture in New Town, Prague, Czech Republic
The Head of Franz Kafka is a moving sculpture at the entrance to Quadrio Shopping Center in the New Town district of Prague. It is made up of 42 stainless steel panels that rotate and shape the face of a well-known literary figure.
The sculpture was installed on 31 October 2014 outside the Quadrio shopping and office centre, which opened the same year. It cost 30 million crowns, paid by the investor CPI Property Group together with the adjacent complex. Kafka had himself worked in the nearby building of a savings bank.
This installation takes the name of a Prague-born writer whose fiction reached readers around the world and who remains one of the central figures in modern storytelling. His narratives often deal with individuals trapped in systems they cannot fully understand, and that tension between person and structure finds an echo in the moving construction of this work.
The sculpture stands in front of the Quadrio shopping centre in Prague's New Town, near the Národní třída metro station. A 15-minute choreography starts on the hour; in August 2024 it ran from a 40-minute cycle of 15 movement sequences. Servicing of the panels is required every fortnight.
The sculpture's 42 panels are driven by 42 motors inside, not 21; the lightest panel weighs 190 kg and the heaviest 520 kg. Its 2.8-metre base carries mirrors that create an illusion of weightlessness, and the panels turn at up to six revolutions per minute.
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