Masters/Art & Design/William Kentridge

William Kentridge

South African artist known for hand-drawn charcoal animations made by erasing and redrawing a single sheet, filmed frame by frame.

Art & DesignshokuninDrawing / AnimationArt & DesignSouth Africa
William Kentridge

Veronica's Take

William Kentridge is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. He is especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s, constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second's to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These palimpsest-like drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art.

He animates by smudging and redrawing one charcoal sheet over and over, letting the ghosts of erased lines linger so the drawing itself remembers history.

Seed
shokunin-atlas-v1
Era
b. 1955
Living
true
Discipline
Drawing / Animation
Domain
Art & Design
Country
South Africa
Wiki Image Original
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/William_Kentridge_(2025).jpg
Wiki Url
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kentridge

Key Facts

Category
Art & Design
Location
, South Africa
Craft
Drawing / Animation
Era
b. 1955

The people behind William Kentridge

W

William Kentridge

profile

Drawing / Animation

South African artist known for hand-drawn charcoal animations made by erasing and redrawing a single sheet, filmed frame by frame.

Browse by discipline

More masters worth your time

Want discoveries like this in your inbox every morning?

One master of craft. Every morning. Chosen by someone with actual standards and zero patience for the mediocre. Free forever, unsubscribe whenever.

William Kentridge — SLAYREPORT