Wentja Napaltjarri

Pintupi artist Wentja Napaltjarri (b. 1923-1934) paints her father's ancestral homeland west of Kintore in the Gibson Desert along the Western Australia/Northern Territory border. She is the daughter of the famous painter Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, one of the founders of the Aboriginal art movement, but also an important initiate and renowned healer who will ensure that her daughter's traditional education is solid.

In the 1940s, when Wentja Napaltjarri was young, the family traveled through their traditional lands, living off the resources of the desert, as the Pintupi people had done for thousands of years. This region is linked to the Tingari Cycles, a set of songs, dances, sacred motifs and stories featuring the Ancestors bearing this name (Tingari). This site will become the source of inspiration for Wentja's paintings when she begins to paint.

His family was forced to leave their traditional lands in 1948 to join a distant community which had just settled in Haast Bluff (Ikuntji). For Wentja, this was the first contact with the white man. It was at Haast Bluff that she met her husband, Ginger Tjakamarra, son of an important artist, Makinti Napanangka. They will then join Papunya, the community where, under the impetus of Geoffrey Bardon, the Aboriginal contemporary art movement was born. It was here that Wentja Napaltjarri gradually began to paint under the guidance of his father, Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi.

This powerful Aboriginal painting has as its favorite subject the waterholes located on its sacred territory. The stories associated with these particular sites are closely linked to the many "Dreams" or myths which were bequeathed to him by his father and whose secrets are only accessible to initiates. We feel the strength of the old patterns, plunging their roots into a tradition several thousand years old and at the same time we are fascinated by the modernity of the result. This is the prerogative of the great aboriginal artists, to seize the tradition but to know how to reinterpret it and to make the bridge between their immense knowledge and the modern, globalized world. We understand all the better the success of Wentja, from Sydney to Perth, from London to Paris. In 2002, she was a finalist for the famous Testra Award.

Besides Wentja Napaltjarri and his father Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, Wentja also had three sisters who rose to prominence in the field of Aboriginal art: Tjunkiya Napaltjarri (1927-2009), Wintjiya Napaltjarri (b. 1932) and Linda Syddick Napaltjarri (b. in 1937).

His works are present in many collections:

Aboriginal Art Museum, Netherlands

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Artbank

Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery

National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Victoria

Supreme Court of the Northern Territory

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Tandanya National Aboriginal Art and Cultural Institute Inc., Adelaide

Flinders University Museum, Adelaide

The Kaplan – Levi Collection, Seattle

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Thomas Vroom Collection

Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth

Awards received by this artist:

2007 – finalist, 24th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.

2008 – finalist, 25th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.