A Tinga of Tanzania

A recent Tinga Tinga painting sold for $600 on an online art website. I know what you are thinking, in fact, most of us, Tanzanians are doomed for thinking what you are thinking, and it is indeed exactly, what I was thinking too. $600 for a Tingatinga! Are they mad? The simple answer my friends, is no, they are not.

We may not value the art on our doorsteps but tourists and expats surely do, some people have not even visited Tanzania, yet are aware of our arts and crafts. The majority of us reading this, will not own a Tingatinga (thankfully I do) and some of us won't even know what a Tingatinga is, so I think it's time for a lesson in Tingatinga history…

Once there was a man called Edward S. Tingatinga. During the 1960s, he established an art form that became associated with Tanzania.

Today, "Tingatinga" is the Tanzanian term for this form of art, known most intimately in Tanzania, Kenya, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland etc. Over the years, knowledge about Tingatinga has spread to other parts of Africa and Europe, as well as to other English-speaking parts of the world. In the past, Tingatinga art could be sold on its name alone, but increasingly other works of art are being presented as "Tingatinga" as well.

Boiled down to its core, Tingatinga art can be defined as painting on Masonite using bicycle paint. Market limitations have prevented artists from working in larger formats. In addition, the choice of design in Tingatinga and other types of African art has often been adapted to the purchaser's expectations of what should be included in an African painting. Bicycle paint is a good medium to work in when making clear, vibrant colored paintings that contain sharp contrasts. Since the paint does not dry very fast, it requires that the artist first paint the background, letting the paint dry before working on the foreground design.

This technique of letting the background dry, as well as the thick consistency of bicycle paint, is what make Tingatinga paintings so easy to interpret, since they display contours and clearly separated color surfaces. This media also means that today Tingatinga designs cover a verity of media such as wooden trays, plates, cups, glasses, seats, spire tires and bicycle parts. You should go watch them paint, it's absolutely fascinating.

Tingatinga's successors developed the decorative vein of Tingatinga painting, while the artist himself painted "the big five" and other motifs that were not at all based on the decorative art style. "The big five" was and is a central theme of art and handicrafts from southern and eastern Africa, symbolizing the typical, large animals on the continent: elephant, lion, giraffe, hippopotamus and antelope. It has also become the heart and soul of African tourist art. Although Tingatinga did not invent “the big five” but it is a subject in almost every genre of African art.

Tingatinga like any art has its influences. Many Tingatinga paintings illustrate both the origins of and the meeting between east and west in eastern Africa.

The development assistance policies of the Scandinavian countries have, generally speaking, both invited and provided the economic prerequisites for cultural endeavors, to a larger degree than aid to Africa from other countries. Tingatinga artists have been supported by the purchase of individual works and whole collections, as well as through the printing and sales of postcards.

Entrepreneurial African artists have, together with Scandinavian artists and cultural workers from development assistance organizations, tried to find those sorts of products, which the market will accept. The myth that neither colonial culture nor post-colonial development assistance operations can influence "free" Africans is a philosophical problem, which cannot be refuted enough. The most reasonable conclusion one can reach about Tingatinga art is to describe the meeting between Scandinavians and Tingatinga and his colleagues as historic and as having influences on both Western and African cultures.

Among Edward Tingatinga's successors, his half brother Simon Mpata should be mentioned. In the beginning of his career, he painted tourist-friendly landscape motifs such as "Kilimanjaro" with its snow-capped peak, landscapes with exotic animals, etc.

Masonite boards painted with bicycle paint can still be found in well-stocked "curio shops", at the Slipway, at the Tingatinga cooperative on Haile Selaisse Road just behind Club Maisha, as well as in solidarity shops located throughout Western Europe and many international websites. The export of Tingatinga paintings from Tanzania to Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and other tourist centers, seems to be lively and gaining Tanzania a very prosperous reputation in the art world.

Indeed the Tingatinga is so popular in the Western world that it's being digitized into a cartoon.

I am hoping that you will now go out and get yourself a Tingatinga; they are going to be invaluable assets in the future, and if you are not into investments and the like, just buy one to add some colour onto your walls. If you still don't fancy a Tingatinga yourself, make sure you promote this beautiful art among your peers and be proud to say that you're from the Tinga country.