The Museum der Moderne Salzburg is organizing a comprehensive exhibition of the celebrated South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955, lives in Johannesburg) at both of its venues. This large-scale exhibition will coincide with the premiere of the opera Wozzeck produced by Kentridge for the Salzburg Festival.

Kentridge was known in the 1990s for his expressive animated drawings and video installations and has worked for many years on opera and theater productions. His multimedia productions combine skilled graphics with theatrical vitality. His close relationship with the theater as an actor, producer, and set and costume designer highly informs his work as a visual artist. In his work Kentridge is particularly interested in the effects of colonialism, revolutions, and exile.

His confrontation with the significance and ways of expressing time is a leitmotif throughout his work, which ranges from the epic to the everyday, from the casual to the tragic. The Mönchsberg exhibition will feature eight large-scale multimedia installations, one of his first and his latest works. The part of the exhibition at the Rupertinum is devoted to Kentridge’s engagement with theater and opera. It will feature posters and drawings, designs, models, and costumes created since the late 1970s for major theater and opera productions.