William Kentridge: Universal Archive

Exhibition Website

Aug 25 2018 - Nov 11 2018


For Universal Archive, South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) revists familiar personal iconography—coffee pots, typewriters, cats, trees, nudes, and other imagery—presenting an intimate thematic repertoire that appears in art and stage productions throughout the artist’s career. Based on ink sketches, the 75 linocut prints shift from identifiable subject matter to deconstructed images of abstract marks on dictionary and encyclopedia pages, forming juxtapositions that suggest skepticism about the creative process and knowledge construction.


Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.
IMAGE: William Kentridge, Ref 32, 2012 From Universal Archive series; Linocut printed on non-archival pages from Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 13 3/4 x 10 5/8 inches. Image courtesy of Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, and David Krut Projects, Johannesburg/New York


Whether or not you go, A Universal Archive: William Kentridge as Printmaker is a unique and beautifully presented book including almost 100 prints from 1988 to the present, with a stress on experimental, collaborative and serial works. South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, and theatre and opera productions. He is also an innovative and prolific printmaker--of etchings, engravings, aquatints, silkscreens, linocuts and lithographs--often experimenting with challenging formats and combinations of printing techniques to create highly worked, intensely atmospheric imagery. His prints range in scale from intimate etchings and drypoints to linocuts on rice paper and canvas measuring over eight feet high and are reproduced on a variety of materials, a tactile approach which is echoed in the design and production of this volume. Kentridge’s distinctive use of light and shadow and silhouettes, his concern with memory and perspective, and his absorption in literary texts are all strongly in evidence throughout this book, which provides new insights into the working methods of this prolific artist.

A Universal Archive: William Kentridge as Printmaker

  • Works on Paper
  • Africa
  • 20th Century
  • William Kentridge

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