Untitled (Hippo and Oxpeckers)

In 1985 William Kentridge was commissioned to produce a suite of wildlife drawings for energy company Mobil’s new Cape Town headquarters, designed by architect Louis Karol. The suite of 15 drawings he delivered, now part of the Engen Collection, reveal Kentridge’s remarkable skill as a draughtsman. By turns illustrative, humorous, melancholic, surreal and possibly even prophetic in the case of his composition featuring an overturned rhino, they also demonstrate his deft handling of a subject matter often prone to cliché.