Rex battarbee and albert namatjira biography
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The Artists
Albert Namatjira
A Biographical Outline
Albert Namatjira Painting
(South Australia Museum Archives Scholz Collection)
Reproduction from Megaw, M. Ruth (catalogue editor) The Heritage of Namatjira
Australian Exhibitions Touring Agency, 1991.
1902: Albert Namatjira was a full-blooded member of the Western Aranda (Arunta) tribe, and his birth was registered at the Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission on July 28, 1902.
Those who have studied the Western Aranda now note that within this tribal area there is a tribal kinship system with eight recognizable groups or skins. These comprise the Kngwarriya, Piltharra, Mpitjana, Ngala, Purrula, Panangka, Purianda and Kumarra.
Albert was of the Kngwarriya skin, while his father Namatjira, who was born near the Ormiston Gorge was of the Piltharra skin and his mother Ljukuta, who was born near Palm Valley was of the Mpitjana skin. Albert was the first born son in his family.
The Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission was
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Battarbee and Namatjira
Battarbee and Namatjira is the double biography of artists Rex Battarbee and Albert Namatjira, one white Australian from Warrnambool in Victoria, the other Aboriginal, of the Arrernte people, from the Hermannsburg Mission west of Alice Springs. From their first encounters in the early 1930s, when Battarbee introduced Namatjira to the techniques of watercolour painting, through the period of Namatjira’s extraordinary popularity as a painter, to his tragic death in 1959, their close relationship was to have a decisive impact on Australian art. This double biography makes extensive use of Battarbee’s diaries for the first time, to throw new light on Namatjira’s life, and to bring Battarbee, who has been largely ignored by biographers, back into focus. Moving between the artists and their backgrounds, Edmond portrays the personal and social difficulties the two men faced, while at the same time illuminating large cultural themes – the traditions a
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Battarbee and Namatjira
By Tom Carment
| February 23, 2015
Most of us know the bones of the story of Albert Namatjira. It is one of those iconic tales, which, in the manner of Chinese Whispers, has been distorted and simplified down the years.
Previous to the TV and digital age no Indigenous person has been quite so famous; and no Australian artist had been so well-known, with his imagery so widely reproduced. Especially in the post-war years, Namatjira’s outback arcadias cut a window into thousands of suburban lounge room walls. There was a period when Namatjira’s popularity served him ill amongst some in the arts community, when modernists were looking to America. The trope of those most reproduced landscapes, with a tree on the left or right with blue ranges beyond, was felt to be kitsch. The full variety and originality of Albert’s compositions was perhaps not well-served by the subject bias of the ubiquitous mass-produced reproductions.
Rex Battarbee’s