Makinti Napanangka (c..
Makinti Napanangka
Biography
For many years Makinti Napanangka was the most senior woman painting with the renowned Papunya Tula Artists. As with other Pintupi women exerting their considerable influence on Australian art, Napanangka worked on the collaborative Haasts Bluff/ Kintore women’s painting project.
Makinti Napanangka was a senior Pintupi woman, born in the area of Karrkurritinyja (Lake Macdonald) around 1930.
This series of major paintings, completed in and exhibited at the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide, marked the beginning of Pintupi women’s participation in the Western Desert art movement as independent artists.
Up until then, women had largely worked as collaborators on paintings by their husbands and other close male relatives. Napanangka joined Papunya Tula Artists in
Most senior practitioners of Western Desert art led a traditional bush life in their desert homelands until their first contact with white Australians as young adults.
Napanangka’s life has followed the same course and, as with most Pintupi people, she returned to live close to he