William Kentridge (*1955 in Johannesburg) is one of the world's most renowned contemporary artists. He became internationally known at the end of the 1980s for his animated short films, in which Kentridge critically, but also very poetically, deals with South Africa's past and present.

To mark the artist's 70th birthday, the Museum Folkwang is presenting a major retrospective that spans William Kentridge's entire career with exhibits from over four decades. One focus will be on the films from the Drawings for Projection series, in which the rise and fall of Johannesburg and the difficult legacy of apartheid will be discussed. Kentridge's preoccupation with the colonialism of European powers in Africa also plays an important role in the exhibition, particularly in the series of drawings Colonial Landscapes, the Porter tapestries and the mechanical miniature stage Black Box/Chambre Noire.

William Kentridge
I Look in the Mirror, I Know What I Need, 2023
Image: Courtesy Kentridge Studio
© William Kentridge, 2025

William Kentridge has been conceiving his own pieces for music theater for many years, which he develops into multimedia works, including To Cross One More Sea, a three-channel film installation about the flight of artists and intellectuals by ship from the Nazi regime. Kentridge also appears in his own films. The film series Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot from 2024 provides amusing insights into his thinking and his studio as a place of creative artistic practice.
September 4, 2025 to January 18, 2026