Painted in 1996 and 1997 in Alice Springs

Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, catalogue numbers PT9610197, 🔯PT970566, PT970649, PT97🌠0577

Private collection, France

All four canvases are unframed and stretched on basic stretchers. There is minor scuffing to the corners otherwise all paintings appear in excellent condition with no repairs or restorations.
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Cf., Hatti Perkins and Hannah Fink, Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, AGNSW, 2000, pp.132-133, for five related works painted in 1998; Vivien Johnson, Lives of Papunya Tula Artists, IAD press, Alice Springs, 2008, pp. 359-361, for biographical notes; Donald Thomson, Bindibu Country, Melbourne, Thomas Nelson, p. 4, 67-72, for recollections of the anthropologist’s time living with the artist in 1957; Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink, Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000, pp. 132-133 for illustrations of five related paintings executed in 1998.

During the respected anthropologist Donald Thomson’s first expedition in to P𒈔intupi country in 1957 he encountered Peg-Leg Tjampitjinpa with his wives and children liviꦚng near Lake Mackay (Wilkinkarra). Thomson camped with Tjampitjinpa’s family for around two months, and ‘One-leg Tjambitjimba’ , as he called him, became the first informant from his Bindibu Expedition, that ultimately became a series of three field trips mounted between 1957 and 1965.

In his book Bindibu Country he recounted, “We called this man ‘One-Leg’ because he had lost a leg long before as a result of a spear wound…One-Leg moved with the aid of a stick about five feet long which he used like a vaulting pole, and in this way he could swing along in vaults of about 🔯nine-feet intervals…One-Leg was not only able to share in all the activities of his companions, but to keep up with them on a hunting journey through loose sand and over rocky hills, tireless through a long day in the desert. In spite of his handicap, aggravated by the heat and severity of his environment and the great distances that have to be covered by these people in sear💙ch of food, this man was strong and active, in no sense a passenger or a ‘hanger-on’" (ibid p.68)

Tjampitjinpa eventually moved from a nomadic life in the Western Desert to the community of Yuendumu in 1964, and later lived at Nyirripi, Kintore and Mt Leibig. In the late 1990s he produced a number of small paintings at Kintore for Papunya Tula Artists, five of which were included in the important exhibition, Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, at the Art Gal🦋lery of New South Wales in 2000 during the Sydney Olympic Games, similar works to those included in this lot.