In 1942 Gustav Wolf published a twelve-part graphic series on his former residence: Manhattan. The motifs do not make cheerful viewing. In Vision of Manhattan the exiled artist wrestled with his difficult and distant relationship to the metropolis of New York.

The American city seemed to Wolf to be the new Babylon. Hence one print was titled New Babylon. Here the Old Testament Babylon and the rugged skyline of Manhattan face one another. On the print titled Emptiness, a dog roams through an abandoned tunnel. A text to the right of the animal explains: "Artist out of work. He must eat." The lonely mutt skulking along is therefore to be interpreted as the embodiment of an unsuccessful and hungry artist. It is not only this allusion that makes the graphic series an intimate document of Wolf's experience of exile. The first edition of the Vision of Manhattan was 25 copies. Its author had to pay the distribution himself. One copy was bought by the emigrant German journalist Max Fischer, a member of Wolf's social circle.

The execution of the prints as etchings is unusual in Wolf's graphic production. The artist did not have access to a wood printing press in New York however. It was not until his subsequent exile in Cummington that the graphic artist could again use the medium of the woodcut in the production of prints for the biblical book of Job.