Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri Pintupi language group, circa 1950

Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri is one of the most internationally lauded contemporary artists from Papunya Tula. One of the nine who made national headlines in 1984 for being one of the last indigenous groups to make “first contact” with Europeans upon his group’s arrival in Kiwirrkurra, Warlimpirrnga grew up in the desert, sheltered by his father from white Australian society. Having been born at Tjuurlnga east of Kiwirrkurra, Warlimpirrnga was the son of Papalya Nangala and Waku Tjungarrayi, and spent his childhood following the traditional lifestyle of the Western Desert peoples. The group’s isolation was enforced until both Warlimpirrnga’s father and Lanti Tkapanangka, the succeeding senior male of the group, passed, triggering the group to search for long-lost relatives in the established Pintupi homelands community of Kiwirrkurra. Three years into living at the settlement, he approached Papunya Tula Artists with an interest in painting and completed his first painting for the company in April 1987. Warlimpirrnga is married to Yalti Napangati, and together they have four children. His son Angus Tjungurrayi has recently begun painting for Papunya Tula Artists. 

In 2000, Warlimpirrnga traveled to Sydney for the opening of the exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, where he collaborated in producing a sand painting. In 2012, Warlimpirrnga’s work was featured in Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, and he has been included in numerous group exhibitions at prominent institutions, including Mapa Wiya (Your Map’s Not Needed): Australian Aboriginal Art from the Foundation Opale at the Menil Collection, Houston (TX) in 2019; and No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. In 2015, his solo exhibition Maparntjarra at Salon 94 in New York City was a critical and commercial success with glowing reviews in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Yorker. 

—Fred Myers and Henry Skerritt in Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu: Past & Present Together: 50 Years of Papunya Tula Artists, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia