TJAMITJINPA Ronnie (1943-2023) - Lot 18

TJAMITJINPA Ronnie (1943-2023) Tingari cycles acrylic on canvas prepared in black signed lower center 92 x 122 cm PROVENANCE: Number 1 Company Ply Ltd - African Muse Gallery - Private collection This lot is presented by Stéphane Jacob-Langevin Ronnie Tjampitjimpa (c.1940-2023) is one of the great names in Aboriginal desert painting. Originally from Kintore, west of Papunya in the central desert, he has been painting since 1971, in other words, since the beginnings of "contemporary" Aboriginal painting, when under the impetus of Geoffrey Bardon - an art teacher based in the region - Aborigines began to reproduce on their school walls, then on plywood sheets and finally on canvas, the paintings they had previously produced for ritual purposes. Ronnie draws his inspiration from the myths associated with the Tingari Men, the great ancestors of the Dreamtime that the Pintupi still celebrate today. These mythical men roamed the Australian territory accompanied by their wives and young apprentices. They would initiate them as they went along. The initiations took place at sites they created, which still exist today: it is here that the Aborigines commemorate their memory during ceremonies in which they paint motifs on the ground evoking the Dreamtime. More often than not - and this is the case here - the works inspired by the Tingari ancestors retrace in stylized form the paths they once followed in the desert. Highly geometric in inspiration, these "tracks" often have the appearance of more or less complex labyrinths that structure the clan territories of central desert communities. They are depicted as if seen from the sky, but there is no particular way of reading such canvases: neither right nor left, neither up nor down. Collections:- Musée du Quai Branly, Paris- Aboriginal Art Museum, Utrecht, Holland- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne- Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin - Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, etc.