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.

The relationship between William Kentridge and David Krut began in 1992, when the pair met casually at the opening of an exhibition at The Market Theatre Gallery in Johannesburg. Kentridge was due to visit London for his first exhibition of drawings and prints at the Vanessa Devereaux Gallery in the Portobello Road area of London. Krut, who was based in London at the time, had developed a working relationship with master printer Jack Shirreff dating back to 1981 and he invited Kentridge to visit Shirreff at his 107 Workshop in Wiltshire to explore making very large copper plates, which would allow the artist to create editioned work on a scale that was not available to him in South Africa. From that point on, Krut became one of Kentridge’s primary publishers, working with him on print editions as well as book and other publications.