Tingatinga Paintings

The story of Tingatinga

Tingatinga paintings are named for Edward Saidi Tingatinga who developed Tanzania's most well-known style in the 1960s.

Edward Tingatinga was born in 1932 in southern Tanzania. He moved to Dar es Salaam in 1959 to live with his cousin and seek employment. While living in Dar es Salaam, Tingatinga sought creative outlets and additional income, first as a member of a musical group, and later as a self-taught artist.

The Tingatinga style

Edward Tingatinga painted fanciful, colourful animals on small shingles which Agatha Mataka, the woman who later became his wife, sold in the village of Msasani to European tourists. He soon found his artwork created enough to earn an income.

As his success grew, Tingatinga attracted a small circle of students including his relatives who he taught to imitate his style. As his craft developed, his art moved from shingles to masonite, a type of hardboard. He used bicycle paint which, being thick and slow to dry, proved to be the perfect paint for his canvas.

Tingatinga was killed by police after being mistaken for an escaping thief in 1972. After his death, his former students continued to paint in his style. Over time they have developed the art from painting one animal to groupings of animals and other decorative images to fill the entire canvas.

Our Tingatinga collection

Tingatinga paintings are vibrant and brilliant with sharp contrasts in colour. The paint is undiluted and often unmixed enamel and high-gloss which gives the finished product a smooth and shiny appearance.

As the paint dries so slowly, the artist must first paint the background and let the canvas dry completely before creating the foreground.

This staged approach, along with the thick consistency of the paint, provides contours and texture to each painting and ensures each colour is clearly separated.

Traditionally, tingatinga paintings are square and feature colourful animal motifs against a monochrome background.

Our unique tingatinga paintings are painted on cotton cloth rather than the traditional masonite.