Kaapa Tjampitjinpa
| Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1920 Napperby Station, Northern Territory |
| Died | 1989 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work | Gulgardi (1971) |
| Movement | Contemporary Indigenous Australian art |
| Awards | Alice Springs Caltex Art Award (1971) |
Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa (c. 1920 – 1989) was a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist of Anmatyerre, Warlpiri and Arrernte heritage. One of the earliest and most significant artists at Papunya in Australia's Northern Territory in the early 1970s, he was a founding member and inaugural chairman of the Papunya Tula artists company, and pivotal to the establishment of modern Indigenous Australian painting.
Kaapa was born west of Napperby Station in the 1920s. His father was Kwalapa Tjangala, a senior Aboriginal man who had ritual responsibility for a site known as Warlugulong, which would subsequently be portrayed by several different artists in major paintings such as Warlugulong (1976) and Warlugulong (1977). Kaapa was initiated on Napperby Station, and was a at nearby Mount Riddock Station.
Kaapa later worked on a station at Haasts Bluff. While he moved to Papunya in the 1960s, he also was present during the town's construction in the late 1950s. Once settled at Papunya, according to art historian Vivien Johnson, he was a drinker with a reputation as a troublemaker, "cattle duffer and grog runner". He was also charismatic and smart. White art teacher Geoffrey Bardon, who worked with Kaapa in the early 1970s, recalled him:
Kaapa was not as tall as many of the Anmatjira Aranda but he was very quick to see what others might not see at all. (I often thought he saw far too much, and perhaps this was why he drank more than he should.) He always moved in a fast, deft spring-walk, intense and convoluted as he whispered in his strange, pressed-together, mixed-up English...Kaapa was very bright, but very down to earth as well, an extraordinary survivor in a despairing environment. I remember him particularly for his intense way of seeming to be everywhere at all times, doing things mysteriously and well.
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