The Untold Story of Tingatinga Legacy

Edward Saidi from 1937 – 1972

Tingatinga art is a familiar sight around Tanzania’s tourist centres. The exuberantly crowded canvases of fantastic birds, sinuously graceful animals and traditional village life can be seen across the country. Tingatinga is a uniquely African art form, characterized by its simplicity and brightly coloured two-dimensional images against a flat colour background. But where did this style originate from, and who was Tingatinga?”

Ethe founding father of the subsistence farmers in southern like many young men before him, on the sisal estates in the Tanga to ar es Salaam.

There he joined a small community of Makua and Makonde tribe people, who had outskirts of the city. Some found work as casual labourers on the local sisal estates and building Others were making names for taken up by dealers in town.

of people to the towns from the for more and more ingenuity. mats, tailoring and performing was inspired by the Congolese painters and the speed at which they sold their Western style

Resourceful, he managed to boards, dregs of household paint

“The 1950s and 1960s saw momentous political and social changes throughout the African continent. One after another, countries gained their independence. Borders were being crossed, and painters from Zaire appeared on the streets of Dar es Salaam selling their brightly coloured pictures depicting traditional village life in the Congo.”`

and old brushes, and with these unpromising materials, from Zaire, but he did not copy them. is style was any formal training, so he painted as he had drawn in his youth, in a simple and direct way without any preliminary sketching and with a minimum of detail. Colourful, crowded birds and animals, dancing life. The pictures sold well and of his family to copy them. They style.

animals painted against a plain background. ach is related to a legend or saying tribal culture. espite this, not as a means of personal expression, but as a method of earning money. With its

In 1972, at the height of their success, Tingatinga was shot dead by the police after a car chase in a case of mistaken identity. Under a government directive, his fellow artists formed a co-operative and named it in his honour, but its composition began to change. More outsiders joined the group and the paintings tended to become more formulaic and standardized in both form and content. The original group had painted on boards of varying sizes but the 60 centimetre square format became the favourite format, which led to the categorisation of the work of Tingatinga artists as “square paintings”.”

frican life held by tourists. The popularity of the people rushing to buy their dried. The group was taken up worldwide. Such was the easier portability by clients humour, the ups and downs of life in the city. lthough call them cartoons , they are regarded as being of there is usually some of the harmony, can usually be seen uncomfortably in the narrow strip of sky at the top of the picture.

It could be argued that reproduce the pictures communicate frican culture and beliefs clearly and directly

All Pictures Courtesy of Edward Saidi

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