William Kentridge, the South African artist whose self-professed "stone-age" animations have dealt with apartheid and its legacy as seen through the lives of humanistically-sketched individuals, was selected as the winner of this year's Kyoto Prize. The award, similar in status to Nobel Prize in Japan, is bestowed annually by the Inamori Foundation to recognize three visionaries in the categories of arts and philosophy, advanced technology, and basic sciences.

Along with the other two winners — skin-cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka and mathematician Laszlo Lovasz — Kentridge will receive 50 million yen ($550,000), an honorary diploma, and a 20-carat gold medal in a November ceremony in Kyoto. Kentridge was chosen by the award committee for creating "a new contemporary vehicle of artistic expression within which various media fuse together in multiple ways" and for his "deep insight and profound reflection on the nature of human existence," according to a statement announcing the prize.

Kentridge currently has a traveling retrospective titled "Five Themes," which features his charcoal drawings and animated projections. Originally organized by SFMOMA and the Norton Museum of Art, the survey recently appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is now en route to Paris and will be on view at the Jeu de Paume from June 29 to September 5 before traveling to the Albertine Museum in Vienna. The artist's work is also being exhibited alongside pieces by Alighiero Boetti, Anish Kapoor and Sol LeWitt in the group show “Spazio” at the National Museum of 21 Century Arts in Rome.

Kentridge also recently produced a critically acclaimed staging of Dmitri Shostakovichs The Nose at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Click here to read an interview with the artist that was recently published on ARTINFO.