Ben Shahn: For the Sake of a Single Verse

For the Sake of a Single Verse is a portfolio of twenty-four lithographs from the Haggerty Museum of Art’s collection created by artist Ben Shahn. The prints illustrate select passages from Rainer Maria Rilke’s only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910). This semi-autobiographic novel tells the story of a college student from an aristocratic Danish family living in destitute in Paris in the early 1900s. The book made a profound and lasting impression on Shahn. Although Shahn first read the novel while visiting Paris in the 1920s, he didn’t create the illustrations until 1968—a year before his death.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.