Originally from the central Australian desert, Benita Multa Napurrula belongs to the Haasts Bluff community, neighbouring the major artistic centre of Papunya where Aboriginal painting originated in the 1970s under the influence of Geoffrey Bardon. In the 1940s, Haasts Bluff was a Lutheran mission; it then became a stock station where Aboriginals from different clans were forcibly gathered together as part of the government policy in force at the time. Most of them were moved to Papunya in the late 1950s, as this site offered more favourable living conditions. 

This explains why, when the Papunya community began painting the ‘dreams’ they had inherited from the Dreamtime, a number of artists were in fact originally from Haasts Bluff, and in the early 1970s several of them returned to their place of origin to settle there once again. However, after the death of these ‘pioneers’, the movement began a slow decline until the early 1990s when, on the initiative of Marina Strocchi, initiated women decided to commit to canvas their vision of the territory where they lived and for which they had ritual responsibilities that their painting materialised. Thus, in 1992, they founded the Ikuntji Arts Centre to disseminate the works they produced, which were very varied in style but always very colourful. Benita Multa Napurrula's work is part of the current revival of this school.