Modern Tingatinga Art was established in 1996 by Mr. Jaffary Aussi, the famous Tingatinga artist in Africa and also famous in Asia and United States. He was born in 1960 and study at Bagamoyo Cultural Centre, in Tanzania, where he was awarded a Diploma in Fine Arts. Jaffary started his journey of art when he was 12 years old and now the world acknowledges him as a “Super star artist in Tingatinga Art style”

Hitherto, other artists used two or three colours for background gradation. However Jaffary innovated the use of multiple colours and by harmonizing them, added a feel for time and space, and even the texture of the air to Tingatinga-style painting, which until then lacked a sense of perspective.

The Tingatinga art style, though retaining some undeveloped and refined qualities deriving from earlier paintings, it was still seen as pop art. What Tingatinga Art Gallery did was to transform this into design which made the birds and beasts of Africa not only beautiful but which also almost incorporates sound and motion. At a time when African music reverberates throughout the whole world, we can not but be deeply moved by Jaffary’s paintings.

Jaffary may have decided that his new method of gradation is best for reverently portraying the wild animals that live under the African sun, stars, and moon, and in its wind and rain. In this balance of colours and forms, in fact, we can see the consistent blood lines of the Makua people’s pride and philosophy of their art.