Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa (c. 1920 – 1989) was a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist of Anmatyerre, Warlpiri and Arrernte heritage.
[4] Once settled at Papunya, according to art historian Vivien Johnson, he was a drinker with a reputation as a troublemaker, "cattle duffer and grog runner".
He always moved in a fast, deft spring-walk, intense and convoluted as he whispered in his strange, pressed-together, mixed-up English...Kaapa was very bright, but very down to earth as well, an extraordinary survivor in a despairing environment.
[9][10] It was the first work by an Indigenous Australian artist to win a contemporary art award, and the first public recognition of a Papunya painting.
Gulgardi was described by the National Gallery of Victoria: "Kaapa's work, with its pictorial elements and seductive delicacy of detail, is cultivated to appeal to the western gaze.
[17] Most of the early works created by individual artists were small; Kaapa was an exception in choosing to use larger timber panels for his compositions.
[24][25] Internationally, his work can be found in the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.