Domestic Scenes

Born in Johannesburg in 1955, William Kentridge is a prominent contemporary artist. He works in and across the mediums of drawing, writing, film, performance, music and collaborative practices, to create art that is grounded in politics, science, literature and history, while maintaining a space for contradiction and uncertainty. Kentridge's work has been seen in museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses internationally since the 1990s, and is held in many major museums and institutions. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale and the University of London; his prizes include the Kyoto Prize (2010), the Princess of Asturias Award (2017) and the Praemium Imperiale Prize (2019).

This book documents, for the first time, the entire 54 images-as well as an additional 65 plate progressions not previously known to exist-in William Kentridge's important early series of etchings and aquatints "Domestic Scenes" (1980). One of today's most respected contemporary artists, Kentridge was only 25 years old and relatively unknown when he made these images which are pivotal in how they shaped his thinking, studio practice and conceptual approach. Presenting a range of human interactions in domestic environments and revealing influences from Matisse to Francis Bacon, from Giacomo Balla to Niki de Saint Phalle, the prints receive in this book fascinating new commentary from Kentridge, who shares his working methods as well as personal memories of the prints' subjects and creation. Framed by detailed research by Warren Siebrits, the compiler of Kentridge's upcoming catalogue raisonné of prints and posters, Domestic Scenes provides some of the earliest evidence of the artist "stalking the drawing": returning to the etching plate time and again to make additions and alterations. The book features 16 cover variations, each with a different tipped-in image from the series.