William Kentridge
South African, born 1955
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyWilliam Kentridge is a South African filmmaker, sculptor, and draftsman. He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955 with a prominent antiapartheid lawyer for a father. Initially he attended the University of Witwatersand in Johannesburg where he studied politics and African studies from 1973 to 1976. Following this, he studied fine art at the Johannesburg Art Foundation between 1976 and 1978. A few years later, he moved to Paris and studied mime and theater at the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. With this unconventional educational background, Kentridge started a career as an artist and now his work is world-renown for the breadth of media that he has mastered, including video and installation pieces, theatre works, operas, and “drawings-in-time,” wherein the artists films his drawing process as it evolves. Kentridge is included in the permanent collections at many major museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He lives and works in Johannesburg. (From Paths and Edges exhibition, Guggenheim Gallery, August 2015)