Folk and tribal painting

Where

Mithila region of north Bihar, and across the border in Nepal

When

An old wall tradition; on paper since the late 1960s

Who

Women of Mithila; Sita Devi (Padma Shri 1981) and Ganga Devi (Padma Shri 1984)

Style

Five styles: Bharni, Kachni, Tantrik, Godna and Kohbar

Made with

Natural colours such as lampblack and ochre, put on with fingers, twigs, nib pens and matchsticks

Women of Mithila painted the mud walls and floors of their homes for weddings, births and festivals. The outside world first noticed the paintings after the 1934 Bihar earthquake, when the British officer W. G. Archer saw them on broken walls, and during a drought in the late 1960s women were encouraged to paint on paper so they could sell their work. The five styles are Bharni (shapes filled with bright colour, Sita Devi's style), Kachni (fine lines and hatching in one or two colours, Ganga Devi's style), Tantrik (goddesses and sacred diagrams, as in the picture), Godna (patterns taken from tattoos) and Kohbar (paintings for the wedding room).

Where

Bhagalpur and the old Anga region, Bihar

Made with

Temple-shaped boxes of bamboo, jute and paper, painted in pink, green and yellow

Manjusha means box. For the Bishahari Puja, a festival of the snake goddess Bishahari, people make small temple-shaped boxes and paint them with the folk tale of Bihula and the snake goddess. The art is drawn with strong outlines and borders in just three colours, and it received a GI tag in 2021.

Where

Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand

Who

Village women, who pass the skill from mother to daughter

Made with

Coloured earth and clay on mud walls; Khovar is scratched with a comb or the fingers

These are wall paintings made by women in the villages around Hazaribagh. Sohrai is painted for the harvest and cattle festival that comes after Diwali, with animals, birds and plants in earthy reds, black and white. Khovar is painted for weddings: a layer of white clay is spread over a dark wall and the design is scratched through it, so the dark shows through as lines. Sohrai Khovar painting got a GI tag in 2020, the first for Jharkhand.

Where

Thane and Palghar districts of Maharashtra, around Dahanu, Talasari and Jawhar

Who

The Warli people; Jivya Soma Mashe (1934 to 2018)

Made with

White paste of rice and water on a wall of mud and cow dung

Warli painting is built from three shapes: the circle (the sun and moon), the triangle (mountains and trees) and the square (a sacred enclosure, called a chauk). People are two triangles joined at their tips, with a circle for the head. A ritual painting has a chauk at its centre: the devchauk holds Palaghata, the mother goddess, and the lagnachauk is made for weddings, with scenes of farming, dancing and daily life all around. In the 1970s Jivya Soma Mashe began to paint every day on paper and cloth, not only for rituals, and made Warli famous around the world.

Where

Rayagada, Gajapati, Koraput and Ganjam districts of southern Odisha

Who

The Sora (Saura) people; once painted by their priests, the Kudangs

Made with

White from ground stone on walls coated with red or yellow ochre, with brushes of tender bamboo

Saura paintings, called idital or ekon, are made for Idital, the main god of the Sora people, at births, harvests, weddings and when a new house is built. The painter starts with a decorated border and works inwards, filling the frame with people, horses, elephants, the sun, the moon and the tree of life. The stick figures are softer than Warli ones, and men and women look the same.

Where

Chhota Udepur in Gujarat, and the Jhabua area of Madhya Pradesh

Who

The Rathwa, Bhil and Bhilala peoples; traditionally painted by men

Made with

Bright colours on a wall plastered with dung, water and lime

A Pithora is painted on a wall of the home to invite Baba Pithora, the god of the Rathwa, at a time of thanksgiving, celebration or trouble. Its main subject is a procession of brightly decorated horses, which stand for Baba Pithora's wedding procession and for the gods and ancestors. Traditionally only men paint it, and when it is finished a priest called the badwa reads it and explains what it shows.

Where

Patangarh village, Dindori district, Madhya Pradesh

When

An old wall and floor art; on paper and canvas since the 1980s

Who

Pardhan Gond artists; Jangarh Singh Shyam (1962 to 2001)

Made with

Acrylic and poster colours on paper and canvas today; earth colours on walls before

Gond painting is a bright, modern form of an old wall art of the Gond people of central India. In 1981 the artist J. Swaminathan, director of Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, brought a young Pardhan Gond painter, Jangarh Singh Shyam, to work on paper and canvas. His style, now called Jangarh Kalam, inspired many artists from Patangarh, who paint animals, trees and gods from Gond stories.

Where

Jhabua district, Madhya Pradesh, and nearby Gujarat and Rajasthan

Who

The Bhil people; Bhuri Bai (Padma Shri 2021)

Made with

Once earth and plant colours on house walls; acrylic on paper and canvas today

The Bhil are one of India's largest tribal communities, and they painted the walls of their homes for rituals. Bhuri Bai, from Pitol village in Jhabua, came to Bhopal as a construction worker at Bharat Bhavan, where J. Swaminathan encouraged her to paint, and she became the first Bhil artist to paint on paper. Her pictures of animals, trees, gods and village life, and later of aeroplanes and phones, are filled with dots of many colours.

Where

Raghurajpur, near Puri, and other villages of Odisha

Who

Chitrakar families of painters

Made with

Old cotton cloth stiffened with chalk and tamarind-seed gum; natural colours, with white from powdered conch shell

Patta means cloth and chitra means picture. Painters coat old cotton cloth with chalk and tamarind-seed gum, rub it smooth, and paint stories of Jagannath, Krishna and the epics in natural colours. The tradition grew around the Jagannath temple at Puri, and nearby Raghurajpur is a village of painters' homes and studios.

Where

Villages of West Bengal, such as Naya in Paschim Medinipur, and Bangladesh

When

Centuries old; the scroll shown is from the 18th or 19th century

Who

Patuas, also called chitrakars, who are both painters and singers

A patua paints a story as a tall scroll of frames, one above another, then sings the story while unrolling it frame by frame. Subjects include the Ramayana, the goddesses Durga and Manasa, and tales of Muslim saints such as Gazi Pir and his tiger in the Sundarbans, shown here. The same families of painters later started Kalighat painting in Kolkata.

Where

Shahpura and Bhilwara, Rajasthan

Who

The Joshi family of painters; Shree Lal Joshi (Padma Shri 2006)

Made with

Colours on a long strip of cloth

A phad is a long cloth scroll that works as a travelling temple for the folk gods Pabuji and Devnarayan. Singer-priests called bhopas unroll it at night and sing the god's epic, while the bhopi, usually his wife, lights each scene with a lamp. The painters, mostly from the Joshi family, fit the whole story onto one cloth, with the hero shown largest in the middle.

Where

Cheriyal, Siddipet district, Telangana

When

Practised since at least the 17th century; the scroll shown is from the 18th or 19th century

Who

Nakashi painter families

Made with

Cloth prepared with rice starch, tamarind-seed paste and white mud, then natural colours

Cheriyal scrolls were painted for travelling storytellers, who sang the legends of particular communities as they unrolled the scroll in a village; this one tells the stories of the toddy tappers. The story runs in horizontal bands, one above the other, separated by strips of flowers. Since few storytellers are left, Nakashi families now also make small panels, masks and dolls.

Where

Srikalahasti (Tirupati district) and Machilipatnam (Krishna district), Andhra Pradesh

Made with

Cotton cloth, natural dyes, and a bamboo pen (kalam) or carved wooden blocks

Kalam means pen and kari means work. In the Srikalahasti style the whole design is drawn and filled in by hand with a bamboo pen, often on temple cloths showing gods and scenes from the epics. In the Machilipatnam style, made in and around Pedana, the design is printed with carved wooden blocks, and its flowers, creepers and trees of life show the Persian taste of the Golconda sultans who bought it.

Where

Nathdwara, near Udaipur, Rajasthan

When

Made for the Shrinathji temple, built in the late 17th century; the cloth shown is from about 1900

Who

Painters of Nathdwara, for the Pushtimarg followers of Vallabhacharya

Made with

Paint on cloth, often with gold

Pichh means back and wai means hanging: a pichwai is a large cloth hung behind the image of Shrinathji, a form of Krishna, in the temple at Nathdwara. Temples keep sets of them and change the cloth with the seasons and festivals, so each shows a scene from Krishna's life or a festival. The one shown is for Nandamahotsava, the celebration on the day after Krishna's birthday.

Where

Around the Kalighat Kali temple, Kolkata, West Bengal

When

19th century to the early 20th century

Who

Patuas who moved from the villages to the city

Made with

Watercolour on cheap, factory-made paper

In the 19th century, village scroll painters settled near the Kalighat temple in Kolkata and began painting single pictures to sell to pilgrims as souvenirs. To work fast they used a few sweeping brush strokes, flat colours and soft shading. Besides gods and goddesses they painted city life and made fun of the babu, the rich Bengali gentleman copying British ways, and their bold, simple style later inspired the painter Jamini Roy.

Where

Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu

When

17th to 19th centuries, at the Maratha court of Thanjavur

Who

Court painters, with Serfoji II as an important patron

Made with

A wooden board covered with cloth, raised gesso (a paste of chalk and glue), gold foil, glass beads and stones

Tanjore painting grew from artists who moved south after the fall of the Vijayanagara empire, and it took its best-known form at the Maratha court of Thanjavur. The painter builds up raised areas with gesso, covers them in gold foil, and sets glass beads and stones into the jewellery and arches. The subject is usually one god, often Krishna, in bright reds, greens and blues.

Where

Mysore (Mysuru), Karnataka

When

Roots in the late 16th century; at its height under Krishnaraja Wodeyar III in the 19th century

Who

Painters of the Wodeyar court

Made with

Gesso in low relief on details, gold leaf and fine brushes

Like Tanjore painting, Mysore painting grew from Vijayanagara painters who found new patrons, here the Wodeyar kings of Mysore. It also uses gesso, but only in low relief on details such as jewellery, clothes and pillars, partly covered in gold leaf. The lines are delicate and the colours softer, so the effect is refined rather than heavy.