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MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Emily Kame Kngwarreye is without a doubt the most famous female Aboriginal artist to date. She may be considered one of the greatest contemporary Australian artists and her influence on the world of both indigenous and non-indigenous Australian art is indisputably great.
Emily was born around 1910 in Utopia, a community in the Central Desert, around 230 kilometres north east of Alice Springs. When Emily started painting in 1988, she was already almost 80 years old. All in all her painting career lasted no more than seven years, yet in this short time she achieved a fame and reputation that many artists who paint their entire lives can only dream of.
One of Emily's most remarkable achievements was her endless ability to create new styles. Most of her work can be distinguished by an exceptionally wide palette of bright colors, but her minimalist, abstract works with two colors, inspired by body paintings, also reflect a rare talent.
Outside of Australia her work increasingly receives the recognition it deserves. In 2008, the National Art Center in Tokyo opened the exhibition 'Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye,' the largest collection of works by a single Australian artist ever exhibited outside Australia, with an estimated value of no less than $30,000,000.

Her masterpiece 'Earth's Creation' (4 panels, each 275 x 160 cm) has been exhibited at the Central Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. In the same year her work was part of the Signs&Traces exhibition in Poznan, Poland.


SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2022 ‘Emily : Desert painter of Australia’, Gagosian Paris, France
2008 ‘Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia

2008 ‘Utopia: the Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye’, Museum of Modern Art, Osaka & National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan

1994/6/7 Mbantua Gallery and Cultural Museum, Australia

1991 Gallery Savah, Sydney, Australia

1990/1/2 Hogarth Gallery, Sydney, Australia
1989 Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Louie Pwerle are the first recipients of the CAAMA/Utopia Artists-in-Residence Project funded by the Robert Holmes à Court Foundation.

Selected Group Exhibitions

2022 Rhythms of the Earth, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Australia

2021 ‘Aboriginalities’, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels, Belgium

2020 ‘Origins: Australian Aboriginal Art from the SmithDavidson Collection’, SmithDavidson Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2019 DESERT PAINTERS OF AUSTRALIA: Works from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia and the Collection of Steve Martin and Anne Stringfield, Gagosian Gallery, New York & Beverley Hills, United States

2019 ZONA MACO, SmithDavidson Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico

2018 Expo Chicago, SmithDavidson Gallery, Chicago, USA

2015 La Biennale di Venezia, Central Pavilion, Venice, Italy

2015 ‘Signs and Traces: Contemporary Aboriginal Art’, Cultural Institute Zamek, Poznan, Poland

2010 ‘Remembering Forward: Australian Aboriginal Painting since 1960’, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

1997 La Biennale di Venezia, Australian Pavillion, Venice, Italy

1994 National Gallery of Victoria, Australia

1993/4 ‘Aratjara: Art of the First Australians’, Kunstammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany; Hayward Gallery, London; Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark 

1992 Aboriginal Paintings from the Desert, touring Russia

1992 ‘Crossroads, Towards a New Reality, Aboriginal Art from Australia’, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan

1990 Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Carpenter Centre for the
Visual Arts, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA


Born in Utopia, Central Desert on November 30th, 1909

Died in Utopia on September 2nd, 1996


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