Tradition · modern Adivasi painting
Pardhān Gond painting and Jangarh Singh Shyam
Also known as Gond painting, Jangarh Kalam, Pardhan Gond
A painting tradition barely fifty years old, made by Pardhan Gond artists of the Mandla and Dindori country in fine dotted and dashed infill, whose subjects are the clan deities, trees and animals of Gond oral song rather than any pre-existing visual art.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 22.600, 80.000
Worth knowing
The Pardhans were the bards of the Gond, not painters; the tradition begins with Jangarh Singh Shyam, whom J. Swaminathan found painting a village wall in 1981 and brought to Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. Within a generation his relatives and pupils had made a recognised school, and his suicide in Japan in 2001 remains a scandal about how Indian artists are handled abroad.
Connections (2)
- Craft tradition ofGond monuments, Ramnagar Mandla
The Pardhans were the hereditary bards of the Gond chiefs whose fortresses stand at Ramnagar and Mandla, and their inherited material was song, genealogy and the bana fiddle, not painting. What Jangarh Singh Shyam did after 1981 was translate that oral repertoire — clan deities, trees, the animals of Gond cosmology — into a visual language that had not previously existed, which is why the school is both very new and genuinely continuous with something old.
- AnalogueWarli painting, Palghar
Pardhan Gond painting and Warli painting are the two Adivasi traditions that entered the art market through one artist each: Jangarh Singh Shyam from 1981 and Jivya Soma Mashe from the 1970s. In both cases the community had a ritual or bardic practice and no tradition of pictures for sale, and in both the market produced a signed style within a generation.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Jangarh Singh Shyam”. Geographical Indications Registry (Government of India) filings; Ministry of Textiles and Sangeet Natak Akademi craft documentation.
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