Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert

First Edition. The Papunya Painting Movement, born in the Western Desert in Northern Australia, is now one of the wonders of the modern art world – but its story is not well known. In 1971, when Geoffrey Bardon a young Sydney art teacher, was posted to the government settlement at Papunya, he found more than a thousand Aboriginal people living in a state of dislocation and degradation. Bardon was not the first European to show interest in the traditional sand mosaics of these dispossessed people at Papunya, nor the first to recognize them as evidence of a powerful, ancient culture. Anthropolgists had studied them over many years, but Geoffrey Bardon’s empathy with the artists and his patient encouragement won the confidence of the tribal elders and brought forth revelations in a great surge of creativity hitherto unseen by Europeans. pp. xx, 140 illusts #0820