Johnny Warangula Tjupurrula

c. 1920 - 2001 Kintore, Northern Territory

Johnny Warangula Tjupurrula was a senior Luritja man from the Central Desert and one of the pioneering figures associated with the emergence of the Western Desert painting movement in the early 1970s. Raised on his ancestral lands near the salt lakes of the western desert, he grew up within the cultural and ceremonial traditions that would later underpin his paintings. In adulthood he lived and worked across several communities before settling at Papunya with his family. There, he became an early participant in the group of senior men who began translating sacred designs and narratives connected to Country into acrylic painting. Warangula developed a highly individual visual language distinguished by intricate fields of layered dots that create shimmering, atmospheric surfaces. His works evoke the presence and movement of ancestral forces across desert landscapes. Today he is recognised as one of the most innovative painters of the founding generation of Papunya artists.