Modern and Contemporary Art: Evening Sale
Live Virtual Auction, 1 April 2025
Modern and Contemporary Art: Evening Sale
About this Item
signed and numbered 7/25 in red conté
Notes
The present lot, from the series Four Paper Heads, is a sculptural, multi-faceted portrait that riffs off Pablo Picasso’s Absinthe Drinker series from 1914.1 Having to some extent created Soho and Felix – two of his most prominent characters – in his own image, Head I shows the artist working with the idea of collating multiple personalities in a single moment, much like how the great Cubists presented on canvas multiple viewpoints at the same time.1
1Mark Rosenthal (ed) (2009) William Kentridge: Five Themes, New Haven: Yale University Press, page 63.Provenance
Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 16 February 2019, lot 55.
Literature
Warren Siebrits (2011) Aspects of South African Art II: 1910–2010, Johannesburg: Warren Siebrits, another example from the edition illustrated in colour, unpaginated.
Lilian Tone (ed) (2013) William Kentridge: Fortuna, London: Thames & Hudson, another example from the edition illustrated in colour on pages 48 and 49.