The Tanzanian Tingatinga painting style was founded in the late 1960’s by the autodidact Edward Saidi Tingatinga. Being unemployed in the city of Dar es Salaam he started to paint animals, plants and village scenes on chipboards with bicycle paint. Tingatinga’s relatives and friends took up his style of art, passed it on and introduced new ideas. After the sudden death of Tingatinga the remaining painters established the art style as a cultural identity of Tanzania.