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?”

subsistence farmers in southern traveled north to look for work on

of Makua and Makonde tribe people, who had already established found work as casual labourers on themselves as sculptors of African Blackwood and had already been

of people to the towns from the and the speed at which they sold their Western style canvases to

“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.”`

old brushes, and with these the painters from Zaire, but he as he had drawn in his youth, in a simple and direct way without members of his family to copy not as a means of personal expression, but as a method of MAY 2022 I Dar Life 65

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”.”

and trees have become much years, the use of canvas for easier portability by clients has resulted considerable humour, the ups uncomfortably in the narrow strip

to communicate African culture and beliefs clearly and directly name of their founder will live on