Suite of Rare Early Wildlife Drawings by William Kentridge from the Engen Collection poised to go under the hammer at Strauss & Co

11 Nov 2025

Strauss & Co is honoured to present a significant early body of work by globally acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge as part of its November Auction Week. This suite of wildlife drawings, originally commissioned in 1985 for Mobil’s (now Engen) new Cape Town headquarters, offers rare insight into a formative moment in the artist’s career and will be offered in a live auction on Monday 17 November at 7pm. 

Approaching the age of 30, Kentridge was invited by architect Louis Karol to produce works for the corporate offices. The resulting suite of 15 drawings, now held in the Engen Collection, reveals the precision, imagination, and sensitivity that would come to define one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists. At turns humorous, melancholy, surreal and even prophetic, the works include

the striking image of an overturned rhinoceros, a motif echoed decades later in Kentridge’s acclaimed public sculpture Over My Dead Body.

Created shortly after Kentridge’s pivotal return to the studio in 1984, encouraged by dealer and family friend Reinhold Cassirer, the Mobil commission emerged during a period of intense artistic awakening. Recalling this period in his 2012 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University (Six Drawing Lessons), Kentridge likened the feeling of re-entering the studio to the restless pacing of Rilke’s caged panther: alert, searching, circling possibilities.

While human behaviour has long been a central concern in Kentridge’s oeuvre, animals – real, symbolic and allegorical – recur throughout his early works. In the mid-1980s alone, they appeared in major pieces such as The Conservationists’ Ball (1985) and the Renoir-inspired The Boating Party (1985), as well as in political cartoons he briefly produced for The Weekly Mail, signed under the playful pseudonym “PH Chere”, a nod to the French term for warthog: phacochère.

Influenced by Goya, Daumier and the German Expressionists, Kentridge’s early drawings possess a dark emotional charge. Yet this wildlife commission also reveals a quieter discipline rooted in classical training. Introduced to artist-educator Bill Ainslie at age 12, Kentridge later studied at Ainslie’s Johannesburg Art Foundation, where rigorous life-drawing laid the foundation for his expressive command of form. For this project, Kentridge turned to South Africa’s great wildlife reference books,  a resource he would transform through his unmistakable hand.

These works, bold in gesture yet deeply observant, demonstrate a young artist testing the boundaries of representation, narrative, and meaning, qualities that continue to shape his internationally celebrated practice.

The offering of this extraordinary suite during Strauss & Co’s November Auction Week presents collectors with a rare opportunity to engage with the early creative force of an artist whose work has altered the global cultural landscape.

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Johannesburg Flagship Week 2025

LIVE

William Kentridge Drawings

From the Engen Collection

7:00pm Mon, 17 Nov 2025 SAST

Evening Sale

Modern and Contemporary Art

7:00pm Tue, 18 Nov 2025 SAST

ONLINE

Day Sale

Modern and Contemporary Art

Closes 2:00pm Tue, 18 Nov 2025 SAST

The Starcke Collection of African Art

Closes 2:00pm Wed, 19 Nov 2025 SAST

Open for Viewing daily from 9 – 4

Saturday 15 November 9 – 4

Sunday 16 November 9 -4

Join the Art Specialist team on Saturday the 15^th & 16^th November at 11am for an in-depth exploration of the art and artists featured in the Johannesburg November 2025