19 Facts About Wintjiya Napaltjarri

Wintjiya Napaltjarri, known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No 1, was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri; both were wives of Toba Tjakamarra, with whom Wintjiya had five children.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri's work is held in the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia.

Napaljarri or Wintjiya Napaltjarri is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri came from an area north-west or north-east of Walungurru.

Johnson reports that Wintjiya Napaltjarri was born at Mulparingya, "a swamp and spring to the northeast of Kintore", west of Alice Springs.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri, the two women being the second and third wives of Toba Tjakamarra, father of one of the prominent founders of the Papunya Tula art movement, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri then joined a painting camp with other women from Kintore and Haasts Bluff to produce "a series of very large collaborative canvases of the group's shared Dreamings".

Twenty-five women were involved in planning the works, which included three canvases that were 3 metres square, as well as two that were 3 by 1.5 metres ; Tjunkiya and Wintjiya Napaltjarri performed a ceremonial dance as part of the preparations.

Tjunkiya and her sister Wintjiya Napaltjarri did not confine their activities to painting canvases.

The works, including several by Wintjiya Napaltjarri, were not completed until 1995.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri portrays "tree-like organic motifs" and representations of hair-string skirts.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri's work was included in a survey of the history of Papunya Tula painting hosted by Flinders University in the late 1990s.

Likewise, Marina Strocchi has noted the contrast between some of the subtle colours used in batik and Wintjiya Napaltjarri's characteristic painting palette, which is "almost exclusively stark white with black or red".

Works by Wintjiya Napaltjarri have appeared in many significant exhibitions including: Papunya Women group exhibition ; Raiki Wara: Long Cloth from Aboriginal Australia and the Torres Strait ; Twenty-five Years and Beyond: Papunya Tula Painting ; Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius and Land Marks.

Also in 2010, a print by Wintjiya Napaltjarri was selected for inclusion in the annual Fremantle Arts Centre's Print Award.

Works by Wintjiya Napaltjarri are held in major private collections such as Nangara.

Wintjiya Napaltjarri's work has been acquired by several major public art institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 2018 Wintjiya Napaltjarri's work was included in the exhibition Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia at The Phillips Collection.