Notes

William Kentridge has described printmaking as “close to the centre” of his method as an artist.¹ The artist’s early adoption of printmaking was tied to his rejection of painting:

“When I started art school [Johannesburg Art Foundation, 1976-78], painting on canvas was the norm and was what I spent my days doing, and I was miserable at it. Both miserable psychologically – trying to do it – and very bad at it. So it was an enormous relief (and pleasure) to suddenly discover the medium of etching. This was a medium in which it was legitimate to use no colour, to work monochromatically.”²

His later interest in drawing in charcoal, the medium that undergirds his celebrated animated films, also grew directly out of his initial interest in printmaking. His relaxed draughtsmanship here, which conjures a form reminiscent of Picasso’s stout neo-classical figures, is paired with his inventive use of colour montage.

Kentridge is widely recognised as an expert printmaker. His competency extends to a diverse range of printmaking techniques, including chine collé, a collage technique developed by nineteenth-century European printmakers to bond thin Chinese and Japanese papers onto a support sheet using starch paste. This undated work was very likely produced circa 1991-94, a period of experimentation and growing confidence. This composition closely resembles two works in collage and charcoal on linen acquired from the artist in the late 1980s

and held in a private collection in San Diego.³ It also shares technical affinities with a series of charcoal and gouache works on paper, studies of heads incorporating montaged elements of colour, exhibited at the Newtown Galleries in 1991. The naked female subject here was a mobile protagonist. She appears in numerous works on paper from this period, including Little Morals (1991), a suite of sugarlift etchings produced with Picasso’s figurative prints in mind.⁴

¹. Hecker, Judith B. and Kentridge, William (2001) William Kentridge: Trace: Prints from the Museum of Modern Art, New York: Museum of Modern Art. Page 64
². Ibid.
³. Correspondence with Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 18 September 2015
⁴. Law-Viljoen, Bronwynn (ed.). (2006) William Kentridge Prints, Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing. Page 42