Photo: Peter Campbell / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)

William Kentridge

ウィリアム・ケントリッジ　/　うぃりあむ・けんとりっじ

Film director from South Africa

April 28, 1955 (age 71)　・　Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Gauteng
film director
painter
theatre director

My Take

What grips me about Kentridge is his refusal to let an image stay finished. Filming a charcoal drawing, erasing it, redrawing, filming again, he turns the smudge itself into meaning, and those ghostly traces feel inseparable from South Africa's history of erasure and memory. He is far more than a technically gifted draftsman. The Kyoto Prize and the Praemium Imperiale confirm what I already sensed, that his work carries moral weight. I admire artists who make process visible, and Kentridge makes erasure a form of remembering. To me that paradox is the heart of his genius.

Overview

William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) 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.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Profile

Name (English): William Kentridge
Name (Japanese): ウィリアム・ケントリッジ
Reading: うぃりあむ・けんとりっじ
Born: April 28, 1955 (age 71)
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Taurus / Goat
Origin: Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: film director / painter / theatre director / scenographer / draftsperson

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Private
University: University of the Witwatersrand

Awards & achievements

Goslarer Kaiserring
2012 Dan David Prize
2010 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy
2017 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2019 Praemium Imperiale
2021 honorary doctorate of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres‎

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

6. Links

Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A3%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A0%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B1%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%E3%83%83%E3%82%B8

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