Tinga Tinga is more than popular art from Tanzania, East Africa!

Tinga Tinga is a name for a well-known painting art style from Tanzania, East Africa which was started in 1968 by Edward Saidi Tingatinga.
Since then the family of E.S.Tingatinga operates from Tinga Tinga Partnership and later from Tinga Tinga Arts Co-operative Society based in the commercial capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam. Though the Tinga Tinga refers to art, much of the production is rather handicraft which includes the reproduced paintings and various products aimed for international markets. These products include hand-painted plates, glass, pencils, decorative objects and others.

Tinga Tinga brand spread throughout Tanzania and East Africa -without any effective tools to protect the name and production of the Tinga Tinga Coopertive. Tourists may find Tinga Tinga paintings and products in Zanzibar, Arusha and even in Kenya. Today, there are estimated 500 painters in East Africa. Most of them copy and imitate the art and handicraft of the family of E.S.Tingatinga. But not only poor Tanzanians infringes the copyrights of Tinga Tinga Cooperative but even rich international companies registered Tinga Tinga as trademark. Often they use the traditional designs of Tinga Tinga art in their own products. Tingatinga family is seldom profiting from its creative ideas.

Most tourists will encounter the Tinga Tinga painters on Zanzibar, Moshi (a city under Kilimanjaro mountain), Arusha, Mto wa Mbu (city respective town near Serengeti National Park). The reason is simple - the art is catering to tourists, the painters strive to sell their paintings to the casual foreign visitors. But this website brings you much more! It brings you the paintings which almost never reach the hands of casual traveller but makes it into museums, galleries and auctions houses. You too may decorate your own spaces with this much appreciated art work!

They are several hundred Tinga Tinga painters in Tanzania now. Maybe one hundred of them are really good. But the point here is that they are not the same. All have a distinctive style, a personal touch. And some are very different.