Who is albert namatjira

By the s Albert Namatjira was a household name. Living in Alice Springs and granted full citizen rights, Albert was in a position that none of his countrymen shared.

His cultural obligations to his clan group put him in an impossible position — he could not have privileges and assets without sharing them with his fellow Arrente kinsmen. In this era Aboriginal people did not possess citizen rights and could not obtain alcohol, and Albert who could do so, was under pressure to provide for his countrymen.

In following his cultural obligations Albert was breaking the law, and was imprisoned. His parents called him Elea. But after moving to an Aboriginal mission Hermannsburg and adopting Christianity, they baptised and renamed their son. That was a lifestyle he knew little about, until he turned thirteen. At the age of thirteen Albert experienced an important Aboriginal ritual — initiation.

As one of the Aranda group, he lived in the bush for six months and was taught traditional laws and customs by tribal elders. Work as a camel driver took Albert through the country he would later paint, the dreamtime places of his Aranda people.

By this time he had married Ilkalita, a member of a neighboring community. The couple built a house near the mission, and Albert supported his growing family by doing odd jobs. These included making and selling small pieces of artwork.

In two Melbourne artists visited the mission to exhibit their paintings. Seeing them, Albert Namatjira was inspired to paint seriously. Two years later, he volunteered to show one of the painters, Rex Batterbee, good places to paint.

Tensions arose between Namatjira and the Aranda Arts Council chaired by Battarbee when the council tried to maintain control over the quality and quantity of his work.

Namatjira also encountered racial discrimination. He was refused a grazing licence in and prevented in from building a house on land he bought at Alice Springs. Seeking further means of support for his family, he discovered copper deposits at Areyonga Reserve, but they proved commercially unviable.

By the early s he lived independently of the mission in a fringe camp at Morris Soak on the outskirts of Alice Springs. The citizenship granted to Namatjira in led to further anomalies. Exempted from the restrictions imposed on other 'full-blooded' Aborigines, he had access to alcohol which he shared with members of his family in accordance with Aboriginal custom. In he was charged with supplying alcohol to the artist Henoch Raberaba and sentenced to six months imprisonment with labour.

Following a public outcry and two appeals, the sentence was reduced to three months. Namatjira finally served two months of 'open' detention at the Papunya settlement in March-May He died of hypertensive heart failure on 8 August that year at Alice Springs Hospital and was buried with Lutheran forms in the local cemetery.

His wife, five sons and one of his daughters survived him. For a time Namatjira's name drifted into obscurity, his achievements largely eclipsed by the 'dot painting' style developed at Papunya in the s. Recent re-evaluations recognize his influence on Aboriginal artists in Central Australia and elsewhere. In members of the Hermannsburg Potters, led by his grand-daughter Elaine, acknowledged Namatjira's legacy by producing a terracotta mural for the headstone of his grave.

The work is a landscape combining three sites in the Macdonnell Ranges which were the subjects of his paintings. View the front pages for Volume Select Bibliography C.