(Cave at Mt Liebig)

Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri
Pintupi people, Northern Territory
c.1926 – 1998

(Cave at Mt Liebig)
1972
earth pigments on board
Place made
Papunya, Northern Territory
Medium
earth pigments on board
Dimensions
70.0 x 65.0 cm
Credit line
Gift of Cedric and Coralie Patterson in memory of Pat Hogan 2006
Accession number
20061P7
Signature and date
Not signed. Not dated.
Media category
Painting
Collection area
Australian paintings - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Copyright
© Estate of Mick Namerari Tjapaltjarri/Aboriginal Artists Agency

  • Pintupi artist Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri was born in 1926 in Marnpi, Northern Territory. After a family tragedy, he moved with relatives to Putarti Spring, southwest of Mount Liebig. By the 1960s, Namarari had relocated to Papunya and later began to articulate his Tjukurpa (ancestral creation stories), and other stories, onto found boards. He also became a founding member of the Papunya Tula Artists, the wellspring for the Western Desert art movement.

    Namarari’s painting Cave at Mount Liebig was created in 1972 during a period of intense artistic output. It depicts an important unnamed cave site in a canyon at Mount Liebig. Undulating subtle pink lines, infilled with ochre dots, radiate from a central roundel, while patches of dots suggest the variations of terrain. The painting expresses the artist’s affinity with and connection to the Mount Liebig area, communicating the importance of the site while also recording his significant journeys across the region throughout his lifetime.

    This work paves the way for Namarari’s later paintings, which would push his aesthetic ideas and self-expression. With its subtlety and its looser brushstrokes, Cave at Mount Liebig presages his move towards abstraction.

    Gloria Strzelecki, Associate Curator of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art

  • [Book] AGSA 500.