(b Kintore Ranges, N. Territory, ?1915–20; d Alice Springs, N. Territory, 14 Dec 1990). Australian Aboriginal painter. He was a Pintupi elder and senior custodian of the important site of Yumari; his encyclopedic knowledge of the Dreaming made him a dominant force in the Papunya painting movement from its inception (c. 1971). He was one of the first of the Pintupi to make his desire for art materials known to the art teacher Geoff Bardon (b 1940), precipitating the involvement of other men from the Pintupi encampment at Papunya. For most of the 1970s Uta Uta lived on outstations established west of Papunya, painting always with a vigour and dynamism that inspired those around him. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he emerged as a master of the mature Pintupi style, producing six large canvases that are among the most powerful works of the Papunya movement. His paintings, usually of subjects from the Tingari cycle, were all different, fearlessly tackling unusual approaches such as the incorporation of huge figurative representations of ancestral and land forms, infilled with contour-like dotting similar to a traditional design, as in Yumari (1981; Sydney, Aboriginal A.) and Old Man Dreaming at Yumari (1983; Adelaide, A.G., S. Australia). In 1985 he won the National Aboriginal Art Award. His work has been internationally acclaimed and is included in most major public and private collections in Australia. Uta Uta returned to his homelands in the early 1980s, settling on his outstation at Muyinnga, west of Kintore.