The internationally influential and world-renowned artist William Kentridge will receive the 7th Ruth Baumgarte Art Prize on Friday, October 22, 2021, 7 p.m. at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. 

Kentridge, born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised there, is internationally known for his drawings, films, theater and opera productions. His artistic practice is fundamentally interdisciplinary, bringing together diverse media, drawing, writing, film, performance, music, and theater and genres. Since the 1980s, he has created stop-motion animated films in which he reflects on African history, colonialism, and the socio-political circumstances of South Africa as a "white" African. In his stories, he combines his own autobiography with fictional characters. Since the 1990s, Kentridge has increasingly devoted himself to theater and opera projects, for which he designs sets, costumes, and animations and also directs. Kentridge works predominantly in black and white. Drawing is always the basis of his work.

Drawing, a passion for the cinematic and the theatrical, and empathy for people are the artistic parallels to the work of Ruth Baumgarte.

Kentridge's works have been shown in renowned museums and exhibition houses worldwide since the 1990s, including at the documenta in Kassel, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Albertina in Vienna, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. The most extensive show of his work to date was presented in 2019 at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, at the Norval Foundation, and in 2021 at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. William Kentridge has received numerous awards, most recently winning the Praemium Imperiale (2019) for painting.

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