Crouching Man is part of William Kentridge’s Ubu Projects, a collection of drawings and etchings, an animated film and a theatre production completed between 1996-1997. The series takes its premise from French dramatist Alfred Jarry’s 1888 play, Ubu Roi, a satirical tale of arbitrary power engendering madness, which Kentridge appropriates as a metaphor for apartheid. 1996 was the first year of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which followed the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the projects, titled, Ubu Tells the Truth and Ubu and the Truth Commission, explore the recounted atrocities and confessions as symbols of a larger national narrative of reconciliation.

In the present work, Kentridge handles paint and charcoal with distinctive flair, constructing a richly toned and textural scene. The drawing depicts a naked man, crouching low to the ground and illuminated as if by a stage spotlight. Overlayed and roughly drawn, spiralling lines, taken from close-ups of Jarry’s cartoon-like illustrations of Ubu. Kentridge himself studied mime and theatre in Paris in the early 1980s, abandoning his early career as an artist to do so. After working as an art director for television and feature films in Johannesburg, Kentridge returned to drawing in 1984 with poetic, political works that presented an uncompromising view of South Africa during the apartheid regime.

Crouching Man was executed as William Kentridge was attracting considerable international critical attention from his inclusion in the 1997 Johannesburg and Havana Biennales and Documenta X in Kassel, Germany.