Ronnie Tjampitjinpa

Painted at Kintore for Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, in 1994 (catalogue number RT940626)

The Superannuation Fund of William Nuttall and Annette Reeves

Bonhams, Sydney, Aboriginal Art from The Superannuation Fund of William Nuttall and Annette Reeves, May 28, 2012, lot 24

Private Collection, Melbourne, acquired at the above auction

At not yet thirty years of age, Ronnie Tjampitjinpa was the youngest member of the first group of desert artists who translated their traditional graphic lexicon from ceremonial ground paintings, body decorations and ritual objects into acrylic paint on board, and later canvas, at the remote government settlement of Papunya in 1971. While he only painted a few small boards in the early years, he was mentored by his uncle, the mercurial painter Uta Uta Tjangala (circa 1920- 1990, see lot 18). Tjampitjinpa’s career blossomed in the 1980s once he settled at the Pintupi community of Walungurru (Kintore) and developed a fresh vision for his paintings. Gone were the bands of fine dots to be preplaced by lines of continuous dotting, producing pictures of immense presence that belied their scale.

The graphic boldness of Untitled, 1994, is a case in point. The Tingari-style matrix is constructed of the usual roundels/sites joined by journey lines that was developed by Pintupi painters in the 1980s. However, Tjampitjinpa has reintroduced the arc shapes (that suggest ancestral beings) attached to the circles. Against a monotone ground modulated by the variations in weight of the brush mark, the iconographs become increasingly dynamic, akin to the choreography of movement across a ceremonial stage.

This painting is sold with accompanying Papunya Tula Artists documentation that reads in part:

"This painting depicts designs associated with an Eagle Dreaming at a swamp site called Tjaru, north of Ngurapalangu in the area west of Kintore. The Dreamtime Eagle was said to have taken a joey or baby kangaroo, and transported it to his nest up in a tree. Ancestral beings poked at the nest with spears and eventually the joey was released."

For a related painting by the artist set at Ngurapalangu and created in the same year, see Untitled, 1994, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Perkins, H. and H. Fink (eds), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in association with Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, 2000, p.127.

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa’s paintings have been exhibited widely throughout a public painting career that lasted more than half a century, featuring in Dreamings. The art of Aboriginal Australia, at The Asia Society Galleries, New York, in 1988; Aratjara - Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art that toured Europe in 1993-4; Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya, from the John and Barbara Wilkerson Collection, at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University that toured in 2009; Crossing Cultures – the Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art that opened at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, that toured in 2013; Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia at the Harvard Art Museums in 2017; and Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu | Past & Present Together: 50 Years of Papunya Tula Artists at the Kluge Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia in 2022.