William Kentridge

(South African, born 1955)

William Kentridge is a South African draftsman, performer, and filmmaker. Best known for his animated drawings, the central focus of Kentridge’s oeuvre has been to examine the years before and after apartheid. The artist conflates his autobiography with that of fictionalized characters to relate his narratives, rendering his signature expressive, gestural drawings in black charcoal and ink. In his animations, a single drawing is retouched again and again to create the film stills, with each new image a palimpsest bearing signs of the previous drawing’s erasure. “My work is about the provisionality of the moment,” the artist has said of his practice. Born on April 28, 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kentridge gained international acclaim for his short film series 9 Drawings for Projection (1989–2003). In 2016, his solo exhibition “Thick Time” opened at White Chapel Gallery in London to critical acclaim, evoking 1920s-era technology and Dadaist collage. Kentridge has also directed several operas, most notably the 2017 production Wozzeck. The artist continues to live and work in Johannesburg, South Africa. Kentridge’s works are held in the collections The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Goetz Collection in Munich, among others.