Created around 1980, Domestic Scenes: 12 Domestic Scenes (1 state) is a rare synoptic presentation of William Kentridge’s foundational Domestic Scenes series. Twelve discrete plates are printed together on a single sheet in a three-by-four matrix, transforming individual domestic vignettes into a sequential, almost cinematic field. Recurring horizon lines connect the separate interiors, while repeated limbs, superimposed poses and residual figures suggest movement unfolding across successive moments.

Sofas, modernist chairs, tea trays, shopping trolleys and domestic animals establish the recognisable material world of the white South African home. Yet these interiors are never socially neutral. Employers are set against attendants who frequently appear as shadows, silhouettes or partially acknowledged presences. Through this imbalance, domestic comfort becomes inseparable from the racialised labour and class structures that sustained it. The cat, dog and reclining lion further unsettle distinctions between the cultivated and the unruly, suggesting – as Kentridge observed – that South African domestic life could itself be understood as a form of wilderness.

Formally, the series records Kentridge’s early exploration of drawing through printmaking. Etched line, aquatint tone, cross-hatching, burnishing and repeated contours allow figures to emerge, shift and partially disappear. The visible revisions are not treated as errors but retained as evidence of thought and movement – an approach that anticipates the altered and reworked drawings of his later animated films.

Signed and inscribed A/P, this exceptionally scarce composite impression condenses the series into a single visual argument – an intimate theatre in which private life, social hierarchy and artistic process remain continuously in motion.

NOTES

What follows are William Kentridge’s own comments on each plate from 12 Domestic Scenes, noted by Warren Siebrits, who compiled the catalogue raisonné of Kentridge’s prints. These comments provide insight into Kentridge's studio practice and creative process, while establishing important historical links to other graphics.

Referencing plates from left to right:

Man on sofa + 2 Attendants

"The double heads are from Francis Bacon, but also there was the sense of needing a movement, as if the plate was trying to tell me about the animation I would tend towards in some years' time.

"In making charcoal drawings, you work backwards and forwards from a mid-grey: you can darken it but you can also lighten it, by drawing with an eraser as well as with a piece of charcoal. In making etchings, you can start with a mid-grey and go darker with a darker line, or pull the mid-grey lighter with burnishing. So the technique of charcoal drawing came into the etching and the different states of etching, just as the different frames of a film suggested the possibility of animation."

Seated woman reading + 2 Companions

"The woman in the wicker chair, with her four legs, is based on images of Patti Henderson who played the part of the madam in Dikhitsheneng. In the play there are two attendants – a woman and her boyfriend – who both take the role of the controlling servant of the white woman. The neat cross-hatching on the wicker chair is indebted to David Hockney's fantastic cross-hatching in his Brothers Grimm etchings [1969-1970], which I was looking at during this period."

Woman reclining on sofa + Companion

"The woman on the sofa was based on a drawing of a friend, Lynne Shakinovsky, in our house in Junction Avenue. In each of the plates there was a sense of the unseen presence of the domestic assistance that is so much part of Johannesburg and South African life. It was symbolic of a class divide but also a racial divide. Even the poorest of white people would assume it was their right to have a black servant looking after them. I knew a white actress who once complained that she was so hard up and so poor that she had to borrow money from her servant."

Seated man + Dancing companion

"The Tulip chair was in my parents' garden and the figures had to do with the pleasures of working in different tones of aquatint. The man in the chair is a self-portrait."

Standing man + Companion + Box

"I think this is the first plate that is indebted to Dikhitsheneng, a play that I had made. A given for the series was that there would be dances between servants and their employers, the servant often disappearing to become a shadow or shape, half-seen, vital but not acknowledged.

"All but three of the plates in the series were zinc. Most of the etchings began with hard ground; then aquatint, sometimes a soft-ground layer, sometimes burnishing and occasionally drypoint.

"In this etching, the outline of the man is made in the hard-ground layer. The fleshiness of the buttocks and the shoulder is made with a fingerprint through a soft-ground layer. There is burnishing to lighten it and define the arms."

Man on sofa with table + Box

"The pinstripe of the trousers helps define form but also suggests movement, like the swoosh lines in a comic, seen in the crossed leg here. The shadows of the servants are done as a test for the minimum needed to suggest the presence of a figure: just a brush mark or, in this case, an area – an outline – made with the stop-out liquid, so that the aquatint is the shape left over from what you have stopped out. You can tell that it is not a sugar lift from the curves of the aquatint, which you would never get if you were making a positive mark. All these shapes are negative marks. The dark shape is what is left when you have painted out the rest of the plate."

Security 1: Mr Fatman Boogie

"This is clearly from Security, a play in which I wore my brother-in-law's pinstriped suit. He had been a banker before he became a trade unionist. As a trade unionist he had no use for a banker's pinstriped suit, so I took it over and we [the Junction Avenue Theatre Company] used it as a theatre costume for many years in different productions that we did about trade unions and businessmen."

Standing man + Companion

"This image is based on a still from Dikhitsheneng, with Arthur Molepo as the servant with the cup of tea. I was happy at that time to try different positions to find the right pose, and then not erase the wrong poses but allow them to hold their own. There is a sense of the superimposition of different frames of a film."

Cat on table + Companion

"The cat is our family cat and the glass table that it sits on is based on a table with similar supports from my parents' sitting room. The principle of this plate, and of the series, was the use of a single horizon line. A single line delineating a space came from looking at paintings by Francis Bacon [1909-1992], as did the distortion of the figures."

Lion on sofa + Light

"I think I first had the idea of putting a reclining woman on the sofa. I am not quite sure where the lion emerged from, except that in the South African context wildlife is domestic and the safest places are the nature reserves, whilst domestic life is wild."

Woman with Supermarket trolley + Cat

"I was not yet doing animations, but in animation you essentially give people extra limbs in different positions. This image recalls the Italian Futurist, Giacomo Balla [1871-1958], and his fantastic painting of a woman leading a many-legged dog on a leash. In my image, all the different positions of the woman's legs are like frames in an animation. Even the cat has alternate positions for its claws. Some would have been burnished out if they were wrong, or stopped out to leave only a faint trace. The shopping trolley was a graphic, angular shape and it carried all the social implications and associations of a shopping trolley."

Dog, attendant + Pot plant

"The dog is Jenny, the oversized dog of my stepmother-in-law. I think this was more or less her shape: she was a very obese dog and would spend her time lying on the floor."

–Siebrits, W. (2022). William Kentridge: Prints and Posters 1974-1990, Volume 1.1, Catalogue Raisonné'. Germany: Steidl, pp.220-231.