William Kentridge (South Africa 1955-)
Mrs Pushkin

stone lithograph

Signature details: signed bottom right
Edition: unique impression, from 10 state proofs
Literature: Siebrits, W. (2022). 'William Kentridge: Prints and Posters 1974-1990, Volume 1.1, Catalogue Raisonné'. Germany: Steidl, another state illustrated in colour on p.317.
Exchange Rates*: USD 22 053 - 28 354
GBP 18 674 - 24 009
EURO 16 292 - 20 947

(1)

image size: 76.5 x 46 cm; framed size: 95.5 x 66 x 2 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

In conversation with Warren Siebrits, William Kentridge reflected on the beginnings of his lithography practice and the sitter of this animated work: a cat lounging on the sofa, rendered with strikingly human-like animation.

Giuseppe (‘Pino’) Cattaneo (1929-2015) was head of the Wits University printmaking department and they had just got a huge new lithography press. Pino, being a master screen printer, certainly didn't know how to do lithography, and I'm not sure if anyone did, so I bought ‘The Tamarind Book of Lithography’ (Garo Z. Antreasian & Clinton Adams, 1971) and, using the book, tried to teach myself how to do stone lithography. It was a kind of hopeless task with its alchemy of detailed knowledge of stones, of etch and counter-etch, the gum arabic, all the different materials used. To be a master at it you need to have spent years learning to feel you can really control how the image gets from the stone to the paper.

There was never a full edition of this as the stone was not stable. By the time I could get a light area to hold enough ink to print, the dark areas would be filling in black. The image that started as quite a subtle drawing became cruder and cruder. Several images were then adjusted with coloured pencil and crayon on top of them. These lithographs were meant to be viewed as a triptych with the expanded sofa, but I'm not sure if any impressions finally sold as a triptych. The sofa was based on the pinstriped sofa in Bertrams, where we were living after we returned from Paris. We moved into the house with Malcolm Purkey and his wife Pippa Stein, and the four of us lived there from 1983 to 1992. We bought the house together. That was the house cat, Mrs Pushkin, with Pippa Stein and Malcolm Purkey. The mirror hanging behind the sofa is used later in the film installation ‘Sleeping on Glass’ (1999). The profile of the mantelpiece on the left is from the Bertrams house in Liddle Street.

^{Siebrits, W. (2022). William Kentridge: Prints and Posters 1974-1990, Volume 1.1, Catalogue Raisonné'. Germany: Steidl, p.317.}

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.