Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri was one of Australia's most celebrated Indigenous artists, whose monumental canvases revolutionized Western Desert painting and achieved international acclaim. Born at Napperby Station in Anmatyerr country, Tjapaltjarri worked as a stockman before joining Papunya Tula Artists as a founding director in 1972. He rapidly distinguished himself through striking, multi-layered compositions of meticulous complexity. His masterpiece Warlugulong (1976), painted with brother Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, became the first of his renowned encyclopedic "map" paintings—vast canvases depicting multiple Dreaming narratives across his ancestral country with unprecedented scale and sophistication. In 1988, London's Institute of Contemporary Art held a retrospective exhibition—the first solo show of an Aboriginal artist by an international institution—establishing Tjapaltjarri as a global ambassador for Indigenous Australian art. He served as Papunya Tula's chairperson during the early 1980s and became his generation's most widely traveled Aboriginal artist. In 2002, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for pioneering the Western Desert art movement. Tjapaltjarri's legacy lies in transforming desert painting into internationally recognized contemporary art while maintaining profound cultural integrity and ancestral knowledge.

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Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

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