Tradition · tribal painting tradition · India
Warli painting, Palghar
Also known as Palghar, Warli painting, Warli painting — Palghar, Warli wall painting
The Warli tribal painting tradition at Palghar district in Maharashtra — the 3,000-year-old ritual painting tradition of the Warli adivasi community (Varli tribe, about 350,000 population in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra-Gujarat border). The paintings traditionally used white rice-paste (chaukla) on red mud-plastered walls as part of agricultural, marriage and lifecycle rituals performed by Warli women. The paintings depict wedding scenes, hunting, fishing, farming, dances and daily life using distinctive geometric human figures (triangles for body, circles for head, lines for limbs). The tradition was documented by Yashodhara Dalmia and Jivya Soma Mashe (the latter being the 1976 Padma Shri Warli painter who introduced the tradition to the modern Indian art market). GI tag 2014 for Warli Painting. The modern Warli artists at Dahanu, Jawhar and Mokhada taluks produce the tradition commercially. The 2020 Jivya Soma Mashe Memorial at Dahanu commemorates the tradition's revival.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 19.700, 72.750
Connections (2)
- AnalogueSaurā icon painting (idital)
Warli in coastal Maharashtra and Saura idital in southern Odisha look alike to an outsider and are built differently: Warli assembles figures from triangles and circles, Saura draws a contour and fills inward, and the Saura field is enclosed and entered by a drawn ladder. Both are ritual commissions rather than pictures, and both now have a market that the ritual does not need.
- AnaloguePardhān Gond painting and Jangarh Singh Shyam
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, “Warli painting”. Colonial forest and settlement reports; Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods.
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