Composed of 110 individually printed sheets, this monumental work is a complex technical achievement. A drawing by Kentridge was divided up and transferred in pieces to 110 metal printing plates, then each plate was printed on unbound pages from a 1950 edition of Chambers's Encyclopedia. Featuring an Egyptian temple, stage machinery, and a falcon, as well as familiar Kentridge motifs—including a lightbulb, megaphone, and camera—the composition resonates with Mozart's opera The Magic Flute (1791), which Kentridge directed in 2005, and, given its grand scale, invokes the space of the theater.

Gallery label from

William Kentridge: Five Themes, February 24–May 17, 2010.

Medium Letterpress on encyclopedia pages mounted on 110 sheets of paper
Dimensions each sheet: 10 1/4 x 14 3/8" (26 x 36.5 cm); overall (irreg.): 110 3/4 x 140 3/8 x 3/4" (281.3 x 356.6 x 1.9 cm)
Publisher Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Johannesburg
Printer The Artists' Press, White River, Mpumalanga, South Africa
Edition 18 (9 with encyclopedia pages)
Credit Patricia P. Irgens Larsen Foundation Fund
Object number 284.2004.a-fffff
Department Drawings and Prints

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