William Kentridge (b. 1955) is a world-renowned multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans printmaking, drawing, sculpture, writing, film, performance, music, theatre, and collaborative projects. Drawing forms the creative foundation of his work, whether it manifests as animated films, prints, collages, sculptures, tapestries, kinetic objects, or puppet-theatre pieces, resulting in an expansive and remarkably versatile oeuvre.

His work engages themes of politics, science, literature, and history, while simultaneously embracing contradiction and uncertainty. While many artists incorporate printmaking as a secondary aspect of their practice, Kentridge stands as a modern pioneer of the medium. Drawings and theatre projects frequently emerge from his prints, and vice versa, underscoring the centrality of printmaking within his broader practice. For Kentridge, printmaking is itself inherently multidisciplinary; he has described an etching as “an extraordinary, ridiculously complicated form of animation,” in which a single plate is continually reworked, producing multiple states over time.