By William Kentridge
Created by William Kentridge at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, the combination print is exemplary of his skillful and highly expressive use of the printmaking medium. Conceived after Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1903 opera of the same title, which Kentridge directed and designed for New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the edition illustrates the politics and whimsicalities located within the opera and Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 story on which the opera is based.