Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, born circa 1943, KWALA AT TJITERLUNGA,

• Lot Sold $28,000 (Hammer Price)
• $33,600 (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)

synthetic polymer paint on linen  
bears Papunya Tula Artists catalogue number RT880448 on the reverse  
122 BY 153CM  

Provenance: 
Painted at Kintore in 1988 
Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs  
Tambaran Gallery, New York
Donald Kahn Collection

Exhibited: 
Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Donald Kahn, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida, 1991; Carolino Augusteum Museum, Salzburg, The Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Naprstkovo Museum, Prague and The Museum of Ethnology, Warsaw during 1992-1993
Dreamings - Tjukurrpa: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, The Donald Kahn Collection, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 26 July-16 October 1994 
Australian Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert- The Donald Kahn Collection, Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh, 3 December 1994-28 January 1995 
Desert Dreaming: Australian Aboriginal Art, Albertina, Vienna, 15 June - 26 August 2007

Literature: 
Geoffrey Bardon and Vivien Johnson, Australian Aboriginal Art from the Collection of Donald Kahn, Miami: Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 1991, p.41, cat.no.10 (iIlus.), p.73 
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (ed.), Dreamings - Tjukurrpa: Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, The Donald Kahn Collection, Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1994, p.22, cat.no.10, (black and white illus.) pp.90-91 (colour illus.)

Cf. For a similar composition by the artist in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, see Watunuma (Flying Ant) Dreaming, 1991, in J. Ryan et al., Land Marks, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2006, p.65, (illus.).
 
The artist was born at Tjiterlunga (Tjiturrunya or Tjitururnga), in Western Australia between the present day communities of Kiwirrkurra and Walungurru (Kintore) where he settled with his family after the latter was established in 1981. Tjiterlunga is a site associated with Kwala, the ancestral Ice Man. In the painting, the roundels along the lower margin represent ice. The painting is a stylistic precursor to Tjampitjinpa's canvases of the 1990s that feature large, bold forms composed of parallel shapes that dominate the picture surface. In these paintings the artist has developed the technique of joining or slurring the dotted brush marks to create continuous cursive lines.
 
The theme of the Ice Man at Tjiterlunga is also the subject of several paintings by Tjampitjinpa's countryman Charlie Tjararu Tjungurrayi (c.1925-1999); see for example Fear and cold, pre-1978, and Tjitururnga, 1981, both works in the collection of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, in A. Croker, Charlie Tjararu Tjungurrayi: A Retrospective 1970-1986, Orange,: Orange Regional Gallery, 1987, pp.39 and 75 respectively, (illus.)
 
This painting is sold with an accompanying Papunya Tula Artists certificate