Omari Amonde

1940年 タンザニア Nakapanya 生まれ。ティンガティンガ画法創始者E.S.TingaTingaの唯一の生存する直弟子。ティンガティンガ・アーティスト村の創始者。 2009年度には、日本人画家ジミー大西さんがアモンデの元で修行をする様子がNHK「夢の聖地アフリカへ　ジミー大西・絵描き修行の旅」で紹介され、大反響を呼びました。

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On the right hand you see mother and father (on the left side) of Omari Amonde (See his profile on Afrum). There are living in south Tanzanina. As you see I have visited the parents with Ilona Bittnerova.

Omari Amonde is the last living student of Edward Saidi Tingatinga. He is also a close relative of E.S.Tingatinga. He met Edward Saidi Tingatinga in Nakapanya, in his home village where he was born in 1941.

When Omari Amonde left for Tanga in September 1957, E.S.Tingatinga worked at Muhimbili Hospital in Dar es Salaam. The trip from Nakapanya in South Tanzania to Tanga in North-Eastern part of country took three months despite using a car. At that time Tanzania was still an English colony and in Tanga there was a big sisal farm called Mkwido. Many tribes from all over Tanzania came to Tanga to earn some income but the work was very hard.
Maybe during the hot days working on the sisal farm Omari Amonde dreamed about another job. It was just at the time when he learned that Tingatinga started to paint and succeeded to sell his paintings to tourists and expatriates. It did not last long and Omari Amonde decided to leave for Dar es Salaam and try his luck as a painter under guidance of E.S. TingaTinga.

Though Tingatinga was restrictive about accepting new students he agreed to teach Omari Amonde. It was his fifth student – after Ajaba, Tedo, Linda, Adeus, Mpata. But the “lessons” were not instructed by Tingatinga. Omari just watched and it is how he learned. “When I painted some ugly painting, TingaTinga loughed”, recalls Omari Amonde. “I stayed in the same room as Ajaba and every morning we went to Tingatinga´s place where painted under a cashew tree until night at a fireplace. I remember that my first customer was from Denmark”.

Omari Amonde is now a very popular painter. He got also many friends, one of them Jean-Denis Joubert who helped him with hospital treatment when Omari was dying. Jean-Denis Joubert illustrated also a book called “Kilimandjaro – Sommet de Legende” and did a beautiful animation using Omari Amonde´s illustrations. But the most appreciation of Amonde´s art work comes from Japan. Recently Omari Amonde acted in one and half hour long documented made by the Japanese television NHK. And it is in Japan where most books were written about Omari Amonde. In 1991 and 1992 Omari Amonde was invited on an exhibition in Paris, France and in 2002 he visited China. His art work is displayed on several exhibitions every year.

Omari Amonde is a very important painter not only because he is the student of E.S.Tingatinga but because he comes from artistically talented family. His two brothers Nakoko and Mkura paint at the Cooperative while the third brother Mlaponi paints on Slipway in Dar es Salaam. His both parents still live in Nakapanya and his father enjoys the status of tribal chief in Nakapanya village, being called Mwenye Nakoko. Amonde has following students: Jaffary Aussi, Nasombe Mchisa, Abdul Mkura, Saidi Chilamboni, Nakoko and Mlaponi.