Photo: D. Lepsoe
 

Martin Morububuna is one of Papua New Guinea’s most accomplished graphic artists, renowned as a painter, printmaker, and muralist.

Martin was born in 1957 in Kwebwaga Village in the Trobriand Islands. After high school, he joined the Creative Arts Centre, then attended Papua New Guinea’s National Arts School and began participating in group exhibitions. His first solo show followed there in 1977. Since then, he’s had frequent exhibitions in PNG and Australia, and has worked on major public and private commissions for clients worldwide.

Screenprints, woodcuts, and lithographs composed most of Martin’s early work. Later he concentrated on painting, experimenting to see how Western art styles, including impressionism and cubism, could be used to interpret Papua New Guinean themes. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.