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William Kentridge is one of the world's most engaging contemporary artists, renowned for exploring the essence of humanity through both historical and everyday themes. This book invites readers to "listen to the echo"-to engage with the resonance of Kentridge's multidisciplinary practice. Spanning more than four decades, it presents works ranging from his early printmaking and drawings, which laid the foundation for his animated film series "Drawings for Projection," to recent installations confronting apartheid, colonialism, social upheaval, and collective memory.Major works such as the panoramic video installation More Sweetly Play the Dance and the woodcut series "Triumphs and Laments" use the motif of the procession as a powerful metaphor for change. The book also features The Centre for the Less Good Idea, a Johannesburg-based performance incubation space co-founded by Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, which takes its impulse from Kentridge's experimental and open-ended approach to making. With recent works like the three-channel film installation To Cross One More Sea and new sculptures from the series "Paper Procession," this volume captures the breadth and depth of Kentridge's practice-at once critical, poetic, personal, and always profoundly collaborative.Co-published with Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
About the author
William Kentridge, born in Johannesburg in 1955, is one of South Africa's most important contemporary artists. He works with and between the media of painting, writing, film, performance, and music, as well as with collaborative formats, to create an art that relates to politics, science, literature, and history, while leaving room for contradictions and uncertainty. Kentridge's work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, theaters and opera houses worldwide since the 1990s and is also owned by many major museums. He holds honorary doctorates from several universities, including Yale and the University of London. He has been awarded the Kyoto Prize (2010), the Princess of Asturias Prize (2017) and the Praemium Imperiale (2019), among others. Steidl has published
Domestic Scenes (2022),
Prints and Posters, Catalogue Raisonné Vol. 1 (2022) and
Carlton Centre Games Arcade (2025).
Summary
William Kentridge is one of the world’s most engaging contemporary artists, renowned for exploring the essence of humanity through both historical and everyday themes. This book invites readers to “listen to the echo”—to engage with the resonance of Kentridge’s multidisciplinary practice. Spanning more than four decades, it presents works ranging from his early printmaking and drawings, which laid the foundation for his animated film series “Drawings for Projection,” to recent installations confronting apartheid, colonialism, social upheaval, and collective memory.
Major works such as the panoramic video installation More Sweetly Play the Dance and the woodcut series “Triumphs and Laments” use the motif of the procession as a powerful metaphor for change. The book also features The Centre for the Less Good Idea, a Johannesburg-based performance incubation space co-founded by Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, which takes its impulse from Kentridge’s experimental and open-ended approach to making. With recent works like the three-channel film installation To Cross One More Sea and new sculptures from the series “Paper Procession,” this volume captures the breadth and depth of Kentridge’s practice—at once critical, poetic, personal, and always profoundly collaborative.
Co-published with Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
