Throughout 2013, Christie’s London will offer an important private collection of prints, drawings and collages by the South African artist William Kentridge. As a printmaker, animator, film-maker, theatre designer and opera director, Kentridge has chronicled South Africa’s turbulent history with an acuity and introspection that extends beyond political observation to a broader examination of human experience.

This important private collection of works on paper elucidates the central place given to drawing in the artist’s practice. Kentridge’s ideas are born through the physical act of drawing: whether it is the precision of an etching needle or the gestural immediacy of a charcoal stick.

‘I hate the idea that my work has a clear, moral high ground from which it judges and surveys. To put it blandly, my work is about process of drawing that tries to find a way through the space between what we know and what we see.’ – William Kentridge

The works in this collection feature Kentridge’s characteristic menagerie of domestic and wild animals, anthropomorphised pylons, kitchen utensils and hardware tools, as well as protagonists from his film cycles, theatre and opera productions, including Nandi from Felix in Exile, The Nose from Shostakovich’s opera based on Gogol’s satire, and the artist as anti-hero in Ubu Tells the Truth.