1902 – 1959 Albert Namatjira was the pioneer and founder of the Hermannsburg School. Albert became its first master painter. Furthermore he made it possible for young Arrernte men to join with him and have unprecedented careers as Australia’s first Aboriginal group to create paintings for the purpose [...]
1918 – 1986 Edwin Pareroultja was the first of the young men of Hermannsburg to start painting seriously in 1943 after Albert Namatjira had been painting for about eight years with successful exhibitions. Edwin’s successful adoption of watercolour painting and his breakaway from Albert’s popular true to nature style [...]
1920 - 1966 Enos Namatjira was unsurpassed in revealing the country in a seeming harmony of spiritual reverence and unspoken meaning so that we can perhaps share some sense of the timelessness of the Dreaming. He painted with traditional pride and sensitive solemnity. His topography and vegetation [...]
1915 - 1968 Walter Ebatarinja asserted his personal independence and tribal identity through his painting career from the early 1950s. By choice, Walter was initially taught by Albert Namatjira, rather than by Rex Battarbee. Walter created paintings, which maximised their impact by abstracting rock patterns and minimising detail. [...]
1914 - 1973 The three Pareroultja brothers – Edwin, Otto and Reuben – made a huge contribution to the quality and distinctiveness of the Hermannsburg School. The oldest of the Pareroultja brothers, Otto, started to paint in 1946 when aged 22 years, after Enos Namatjira and Walter Ebatarinja [...]
1916 - 1984 Reuben Pareroultja cleverly established a subtle delicacy of stylisation that exceeded that of most of the artists. Reuben was a founder of the Hermannsburg School and is notable for his distinctive, sensitive and smoothly detailed style. Perhaps encouraged by his brothers’ individual approaches, Reuben adapted the [...]
1922 - 1991 Oscar Namatjira developed his own stylised approach, influenced mainly by his father Albert, in the 1950s. His natural interest in rhythm merged into a series of rhythmically spaced blob trees in the late 1960s. In the mid to late 1970s he created a painting which [...]
1914 – 1975 Henoch Raberaba started to paint in 1946 first under the guidance of his friend and tribal relative Albert Namatjira, then with another relative Edwin Pareroultja to work out his own style. Over a few weeks he evolved rapidly into a style of upward curving cliff [...]
1918 – 1983 Richard Moketarinja showed the visual and cultural attributes of his country by experimenting in his compositional approaches. This sometimes involved exploring traditional aerial and European pictorial perspectives. The artist employed parallels in all compositions. Most have dots for infill or decoration and some paintings include zig [...]
1930 - 1984 Ewald Namatjira shared the robust shades of his emotions in the way he showed us his country. His passionate intelligence powered his precocious creativity. By 1950 he portrayed an animate country and from 1960 he became assertive of his Aboriginal heritage. Ewald was a founder and [...]
