William Kentridge

(1955-) Internationally acclaimed artist, set designer, actor, director, writer for stage and film. A brilliant and innovative personality and artist who by the 1990s was generally acclaimed as South Africa’s premier graphic artist.

Biography

Born in Johannesburg, he has a BA in Politics and African Studies (University of the Witwatersrand 1974-76), art training with Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976-78) and mime and theatre at the École Jacques le Coq in Paris (1981-82).

Active in film and theatre since mid-seventies, as writer, director, actor and set designer. Co-founder of Junction Avenue Theatre Company (with Malcolm Purkey (1975-1991) and of the Free Filmmakers Cooperative (1988).

Theatrical work

Work with Junction Avenue Theatre Company

For them he worked as actor, designer and/or director on plays such as The Fantastical History of a Useless Man (1976), Randlords and Rotgut (1977*), Security (1979), Ilanga liophumela abasebenzi (1980), and the brilliantly successful Sophiatown (1988), for which he did the remarkable yet functional set designs. He appeared as an actor in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, directed by Malcolm Purkey, with Nicholas Ellenbogen and Vanessa Cooke at Upstairs at the Market in 1978.

Work with the Handspring Puppet Company

In 1992 his celebrated collaboration as designer/director with the Handspring Puppet Company began, leading to Woyzeck on the Highveld (1992), Faustus in Africa (1995), Ubu and the Truth Commission (text by Jane Taylor, 1997), the opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse ("The Return of Ullyses"), which premiéred at the celebrated Kusten Festival des Artes in Brussels in 1998, and Confessions of Zeno (Spier Amphitheatre, 2002). The puppets used for Faustus in Africa and later plays (designed by Kentridge and made by Adrian Kohler and company) have since been housed in a museum in Berlin.

He directed the Handspring Puppet Company in Woyzeck on the Highveld at Upstairs at the Market in 1992.

Confessions of Zeno, Spier-amfiteater, Stellenbosch, 13/2/03. Handspring Puppet Company of Adrian Kohler, Dawid Minnaar. Musiek: Sontonga-strykkwartet.

Ubu and the Truth Commission (Grahamstown Festival (1997) with Dawid Minnaar, Busi Zokufa, puppets of Basil Jones & Adrian Kohler. The Magic Flute (1998-2007)***

As visual artist

He is internationally acclaimed for his compelling work that meshes the personal and political influences on his life in South Africa during and after apartheid. The oeuvre for which he has become best known evolved in the 1980s, namely his innovative fusion of charcoal drawing, animation, film and theatre, including the animation based on a succession of drawn, erased and redrawn charcoal images that he created for multi-media theatre pieces made with the [Handspring Puppet Company], and his celebrated Nine Drawings for Projection film series.

His designs and artistic works have been widely recognised, through museums and exhibitions in all the major cities, including New York (two solo exhibitions in the MoMA, 2001 and a major retrospective in 2010), Melbourne, Amsterdam, Kassel (DOCUMENTA 13), Málaga and Rio de Janeiro.

As film maker and multi-media artist

Besides numerous his ultra-short video art/ animation projects (including Felix in Exile in 1994 and Zeno Writing in 2002), his longer films include Howl at the Moon (1981), Salestalk (1984), Freedom Square and Back of the Moon (1988).

Johannesburg, Second Greatest city in the World after Paris, monument, Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old, Mine, Felix in Exile, & The History of the Main Complaint. 1994 Another Country (music video).

New information

From Artslink.co.za [news0313@artslink.co.za] March 29, 2013.

A visual artist whose creativity has led him to other media, William Kentridge is acclaimed for his compelling work that meshes the personal and political influences on his life in South Africa during and after apartheid. After earning a degree in politics from Witwatersrand University in 1976, Kentridge spent the next decade pursuing his interests in both drawing and theatre, studying at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and working with the Junction Avenue Theatre Company. By the late 1980s, he had begun the oeuvre for which he has become best known – an innovative fusion of charcoal drawing, animation, film and theatre, including the animation based on a succession of drawn, erased and redrawn charcoal images that he created for multi-media theatre pieces made with the Handspring Puppet Company, and his celebrated “Nine Drawings for Projection” film series. In 2010, a major retrospective, William Kentridge: Five Themes, was held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), while the premiere of his staging of Shostakovich’s The Nose took place at the Metropolitan Opera. Kentridge’s work has recently been featured at museums and exhibitions in Melbourne, Amsterdam, Kassel (DOCUMENTA 13), Málaga and Rio de Janeiro.

Honours

Chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2009, Kentridge received the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2010, and was elected as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2011. In 2012 he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University.

Sources

Tucker, 1997

"Artistic masters at Baxter" in Artslink[1] March 29, 2013.

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