Albert Namatjira

Albert Namatjira (July 28, 1902 - 1959), originally called Elea Namatjira but renamed Albert after his Christian baptism, was a famous Australian Aboriginal painter from the Aranda tribe.

She was born into the Aboriginal community of Hermannsburg (Ntaria in the native language) and grew up in the local Lutheran mission. He was already a talented artist before the mission's Pastor Albrecht gave him his first paint kit in 1934. In 1936 he accompanied Australian artist Rex Battarbee as a guide on his painting trip to nearby Palm Valley and it is there that he was taught the technique of watercolor. Under Battarbee's tutelage and support he developed his distinctive technique. The watercolors of arid desert landscapes, done in the Western style, became very famous and at the first exhibition of his paintings, in Melbourne in 1938, all his paintings were sold. In 1957 he was granted full Australian citizenship rights, ten years before the entire Aboriginal population of the country received them.

It was not until the 1980s, thanks to a certain abundance of exhibitions, publications and documentaries on Namatjira, that it began to be recognized that, although he painted with Western techniques and materials, he was adapting the symbolism of western landscaping for their own aboriginal cultural purposes. His painting is consistently based on the tradition, mythology and environment of the Aranda. Thus, for example, his use of ocher tones corresponds to the colors habitually used by his elders and repetitions of similar rocks and trees can be perceived in his work as the creation of eternal symbols, typical of the spiritual conceptions of his ancestral culture.