Lot 610
George Yapa Tjangala "Wattiiawanu Dreaming" (1978)
George Yapa Tjangala "Wattiiawanu Dreaming" (1978)
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Australia, aboriginal., ca. 1978 CE. A radiant dot painting in acrylic paint on board that spirals around a central set of concentric rings, flanked by U-shaped figures, ovoid camps, and coursing pathways that together evoke Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) cartographies of place, journey, and ancestral presence. The composition uses a warm ochre, red, white, and pink palette to create a pulsing optical field; the concentric circles likely denote a waterhole or campsite, the U-motifs suggest seated participants, and the curvilinear bands trace songlines across Country. Works of this period align with the Papunya-inspired Western Desert movement, where the dotting technique both translated ephemeral sand paintings into lasting media and discreetly veiled restricted elements of ceremonial knowledge; closely related examples reside in major Australian collections. Size of frame: 16.75" W x 12.75" H (42.5 cm W x 32.4 cm H)
The Western Desert painting movement, of which Tjangala was an early participant, emerged at Papunya in 1971 when a group of senior Aboriginal men began translating the visual vocabulary of body painting, ground sculpture, and sacred object design onto composition board and canvas. The resulting works constituted one of the most consequential developments in 20th century art, transplanting an ancient cosmological tradition into a medium that could travel the world while remaining, for its makers, an act of cultural maintenance and ancestral obligation. A painting of this date, just seven years after the movement's inception and well within the foundational Papunya Tula period, carries considerable art historical weight. Tjangala's hand is assured and his compositional instincts strong, the painting achieving the meditative intensity that distinguishes the finest early Western Desert works from later, more commercially oriented production.
About the artist: George Yapa Tjangala (also known as George Yapa Yapa Tjangala) is a Pintupi painter born around 1945 at Witingu, in the Western Desert of Western Australia, between Jupiter Well and the present-day community of Kiwirrkura. Following the death of his father, he was adopted by the celebrated Papunya Tula artist Anatjari Tjampitjinpa, under whose influence he spent his formative years living a traditional nomadic life on country. In 1963 the family was encountered by government patrols and relocated the following year to the settlement of Papunya, Northern Territory, where George apprenticed himself to senior painters Uta Uta Tjangala and Charlie Tarawa Tjungurrayi before beginning to paint independently in the mid-1970s. He became associated with Papunya Tula Artists, the collective that launched the Western Desert painting movement onto the world stage. His work is rooted in the Eagle Hawk Dreaming and Tingari ceremonial narratives connected to his traditional country around Kirrpinga and the sacred waterhole of Wala Wala outside Kiwirrkura, rendered in the dense, meditative dot work for which Pintupi painting is internationally recognized. His works are held in major public and private collections in Australia and abroad. He has lived in Kiwirrkura for many years with his family.
Provenance: private Tualatin, Oregon, USA collection; ex-Art Leven, New South Wales, Australia.
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201643
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