AUCTION | The Terence J. Gilbert Collection | 30 October 2025

LOT 4

ANATJARI TJAKAMARRA (1938 - 1992)

Man’s Story, c. 1972
powder pigment on composition board
30 x 55 cm

PROVENANCE
Stuart Art Centre, Alice Springs, Cat No. 12046
Post-modern Primitive, New York, David Betz (Director)

A copy of Geoffrey Bardon's field note and drawing of this painting reproduced in "Papunya A Place Made After Story The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement" Geoffry Bardon and James Bardon. The Miegunyah Press Carlton Victoria Australia 2004 Page 190

EST $40,000 - $60,000

According to Geoffrey Bardon’s field note, in this ‘commanding’ early Pintupi Water Dreaming, undulating water marks frame a set of radiating ceremonial bullroarers and enclose waterholes, ceremonial headpieces, and men’s ceremonial ground designs. The composition radiates around a central axis, balancing symmetry with the subtle irregularities of hand-painted form.

With its restricted palette of black, white, and earth tones, the board exemplifies the pared-back graphic intensity of the first years at Papunya, when ritual knowledge was being carefully translated into new pictorial form.