Waterloo

Medium: Four colour chine collé lithograph with collage and staining
Paper size: 50.8 x 47 cm
Image size: 39.2 x 39 cm
Edition size: 30

Kentridge’s Four Songs for Autumn is a lithographic adaptation of his Paper Procession sculptures, a series which emerged whilst working on puppet figures and on costumes for performance. The starting point for the sculptures were flat collages made of water-colour stained pages torn from a 19th-century accounting book from Chiesa di San Francesco, Saverio, Palermo, Italy. He transformed these pieces into what he described as “something between a figure and a tree”, with the paper stuck to an armature. These paper models were transformed into striking aluminium structures that carefully retained the lightness of paper.

With Four Songs for Autumn, Kentridge adapts the sculptures back into torn sheets of paper but dexterously preserves their three-dimensional form. With their vivid shades of red and yellow, these lithographs represent Kentridge’s experimental process coming full circle with a return to torn paper that pushes the boundaries between two and three-dimensional artwork.  

Perhaps more than any other prints we have ever collaborated with William Kentridge on, these lithographs masterfully bring sheets of torn paper alive. The layers of collage and chine collé appear at once to be moving and still, both figures and objects, as papery as they are multidimensional.

There are a few essential features of Kentridge’s studio: inky red and black notebooks, a table scattered with soft charcoal dust from an in-progress animation, a smooth fountain pen, a bizarre, fantastical moving contraption and almost without fail, a drawing of a coffee pot pinned up the wall.