13 Of The Best Indigenous Artists That Everyone Should Know

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The earliest Aboriginal works of art can be traced back to 30,000 years ago in what is now known as Australia, making Australian Indigenous artists part of the oldest artistic tradition in the world. Art is an important part of life for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, connecting past and present, people and land, and the supernatural and reality.

The Western Desert art movement emerged from these communities in the twentieth century in part as a response to colonization as an effort to establish a global presence for Indigenous artists. The Western Desert art movement has come to be seen as one of the most significant art movements of the 20th century.

Many of the Indigenous artists featured below were either inspired by or a part of the Western Desert art movement.

Albert Namatjira (1902–1959)

Albert Namatjira was a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art as is known across the world for his watercolours and figurative landscape paintings.

Bronwyn Bancroft (1958)

Bronwyn Bancroft is an important member of the Indigenous arts community in Australia. She has worked as a fashion designer, and is an artist, illustrator, and arts administrator.

Graham Toomey

Graham Toomey is an emerging artist and designer from the Wiradjuri and Wongaibon Aboriginal Nations of Western New South Wales.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910 – 1996)

While Kngwarreye is one of the most prominent and well known Indigenous painters from Australia of the twentieth century, she did not start painting until she was nearly eighty years old. She is from Utopia, in the Northern Territory.

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (1932 – 2002)

Tjapaltjarri joined the community of 'dot and circle' painters early in 1972 and immediately distinguished himself as one of its most talented members, going on to create some of the largest and most complex paintings ever produced.

Dorothy Napangardi (early 1950s – 2013)

Napangardi’s tonal black and white paintings of Mina Mina salt country have come to epitomise the classical minimal approach to landscape symbolism from Central Australian Aboriginal artists.

Shirley Purdie (1948)

“Purdie paints traditional stories of Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming), stories of station life, colonial histories involving early contact, massacre, warfare and indentured labour, and Norton Bore and Violet Valley stories. Much of her work also explores spirituality and the relationship between Gija conceptions of Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) and Catholicism.” (from her biography on Alcaston Gallery).

Minnie Pwerle (1910 – 2006)

Pwerle was born in Utopia in the Northern Territory and only began painting when she turned eighty years old. Her style is characterized by its abstractionism, bold use of colour, and use of recognisable traditional motifs (such as animal tracks) following in the tradition of Western Desert artists.

Kathleen Petyarre (1940)

Kathleen Petyarre’s work is well known around the world and has been compared to Rothko and Pollock. She was born in the Northern Territory, near Utopia and is the niece of notable artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Gloria Petyarre (1938)

Gloria Petyarre is Kathleen Petyarre’s sister and a notable artist in her own right. She was also born in Utopia and uses her birthplace as inspiration for most of her paintings, particularly her exhibition “Utopia – a picture story” which travelled across the world in the early 1990s.

Rover Thomas (1926 – 1998)

Thomas was born near Gunawaggi, in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. According to his biography, published by the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, he “demonstrated the ability of art to not only transcend Indigenous cultural borders, but to also become a source of revelation for an international audience.”

Richard Bell (1953)

Bell was born in Charleville, Queensland into the Kamilaroi tribe. His work is politically charged and challenges modern racism. He was a founding member of ProppaNOW, a Brisbane-based aboriginal art collective intended to create a space to give urban-based Aboriginal artists a voice.

Barbara Weir (1945)

Weir is the daughter of artist Minnie Pwerle, born in Utopia in 1945. She was stolen a child from the Stolen Generations, and was forcibly removed from her family by the Australian government and placed in a series of foster homes. This system was similar to the residential school program happening at the same time in Canada. In 2009 she was named one of Australia’s top fifty most collectible artists. Her style follows in the tradition of her mother Minnie but is coloured by her traumatic experience as a child.

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These artists have made Australian Indigenous art popular all over the world and have worked to increase awareness of all aspects of Indigenous culture. The work of the Western Desert art movement inspired Canadian Indigenous artists to begin painting their own experiences particularly in the later decades of the twentieth century.

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