ALBERT NAMATJIRA

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL PAINTER by EVELYN PATUAUA The death of Albert Namatjira, aged 58, in August 1959 was not only a great loss to Australian Art circles but struck a severe body blow to the Aboriginal Art Movement in Central Australia. This movement was founded by well known Australian artist Rex Battarbee in the early thirties, when together with fellow artist John A. Gardner they caravanned to Central Australia, stopping to paint when the landscape inspired them to do so. In the MacDonnell Ranges country round Alice Springs they found the landscape particularly inspiring for water colour painting and discovered the unusual violet-blue quality found only in that area and so well depicted in Namatjira's “The Peaks”. An exhibition of the two artists' work was shown at Hermannsbury Lutheran Mission Station, Alice Springs in 1934 for two days. Among the interested and curious native spectators was young Arunta Chief Albert Namatjira. It is doubtful whether the natives, at that time, ever thought of drawing and colouring other than as a means of teaching used by the old men of the tribe to illustrate ancestral tradition, or religious life. The exhibition by these two artists coincided with a disintegration period of the Arunta social system which was then in its death throes, brought about on one side by well meant missionaries intent on christianizing, anthropologists eager to fill books with conflicting, not always accurate, versions of the dying customs of a primitive people, and that holy of holies, British Law pinning notes on British justice on every kangaroo and emu in the outback for the benefit of ignorant natives. The whole setup when boiled down is known as the gentle art of civilizing. Tugging for all he was worth, but making no impression, we have on the other end of the rope, the tall, wiry, stubborn old man of the tribe, holding hard to the customs, sacred traditions and ceremonial rites that had served him and his forbears well for centuries and which he hoped to pass on to his sons. Albert Namatjira, 12 July 1959.