18th Mar, 2026 19:00
Modern & Contemporary Art
33
William Kentridge (South Africa 1955-)
Polychrome Head 5
painted bronze
Artwork date: 2014
Edition: from an edition of 9
Exchange Rates*: USD 44 106 - 63 009
GBP 37 348 - 53 354
EURO 32 584 - 46 548
R700,000 - R1,000,000
Buyers Premium
painted bronze
Artwork date: 2014
Edition: from an edition of 9
Exchange Rates*: USD 44 106 - 63 009
GBP 37 348 - 53 354
EURO 32 584 - 46 548
(1)
31 x 20 x 19.5 cm
Provenance:
Private collection, Cape Town
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Part of a series first presented in 2015, Polychrome Head 5 emerges from William Kentridge’s investigations into the fragmentary language of classical portraiture. While researching Roman busts for his monumental project Triumphs and Laments along the Tiber in Rome, Kentridge became fascinated not only by the heads themselves but by their plinths – the subtle shift from architectural base to anatomical form, from column to neck. He was equally intrigued by the backs of bronze casts, often hollow and exposed, like the backstage of a theatre.
Workshop for 'Lulu', William Kentridge Studio, Johannesburg, 2013
Image: Stella Olivier, courtesy of the Kentridge Studio
These concerns intersected with Kentridge’s staging of Lulu, Alban Berg’s 20th-century opera, where singers wore rudimentary cardboard cylinder masks painted with simple features. From this exploration grew the Polychrome Heads; bricolaged constructions that test how little is required for us to recognise a head: a cylinder, a sphere, a planar surface.
Although cast in bronze at Workhorse Foundry in Johannesburg, the sculpture is painted in meticulous trompe l’oeil to resemble wood, cardboard and torn paper, playing a subtle game with material truth. The title recalls the polychromy of classical antiquity, when marble and bronze sculptures were first painted in colour. This underscores Kentridge’s interest in surface, illusion and the unstable boundary between permanence and provisionality.
'Polychrome Heads', 2014
Image courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery
COLLECTIONS:
The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; George Eastman Museum, New York; Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA), Michigan; The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of Cape Town and the Zietz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa; Cape Town.
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 18th Mar, 2026
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