Warli Art

The painting is done by the Warlis indigenous tribe of the Gujarat-Maharashtra border inhabiting the North Sahyadri Range. Traditionally painted on hut walls, it has a red ochre base and white paint all made of easily available organic materials. These paintings were often created for auspicious occasions like weddings and harvests. Now, they are commercialised worldwide on clothing and canvas. Recognizing its unique cultural significance, Warli art has been given a Geographical Indicator (GI) tag.

It dates back to around the 10th Century BC and is popular worldwide today. Warli paintings are a celebration of nature and tribal life. They depict scenes of farming, fishing, hunting, dancing, and festivals using just basic geometric shapes like circles, triangles, and squares.

Warli painting tradition dates back to 2500 to 3000 BC. It can also be spotted at the Bhimbetka caves in Madhya Pradesh which have one of the earliest traces of human life in India. The Warli tribe’s tremendous respect for nature and wildlife is reflected in the painting. This painting is done on clay huts are and walls. The painting style was made popular by artist Jivya Soma Mashe who started painting it for artistic/ commercial purposes which was different from its usual ritualistic use only. For his contributions, Jivya also received the Padma Shri. vanti Sandeep Kulkarni is also a famous warli painter.

• Nature Depipctions: Mother nature and her elements are prominently depicted due to predominant reliance on farming for sustenance. Other scenes can be of fishing, hunting, farming, dances, animals, trees and festivals.
• Chauk: it is the central motif which is depicted as a big square.
• Simplistic: A border with simple triangles, squares and geometric figures
• On walls: Clay walls of huts become the canvas for the painting.
• Geometric Shapes: Motis for different items are made from three shapes i.e. a circle, triangle and square. To represent a human or animal, two triangles are joined at the tip, with circles acting like their head. A triangle that is larger at the top represents a man; and a triangle which is wider at the bottom, represents a woman.
• Materials Used: Base is made of a mixture of mud, branches and cow dung that gives it a red ochre colour. For painting only white pigment is used, which is made of a mixture of gum and rice powder. A chewed bamboo stick is used as a paintbrush.
• Ritualistic: The wall paintings are usually done for auspicious occasions like harvests and wedding. This is done so that those events can be recorded for posterity.
• The tarpa dance is depicted which is a circular dance around a tarpa (musical instrument) player.
• Gods: Among the Goddesses, Palaghata(goddess of fertility) is drawn and among the male gods, those spirits that have taken human form are represented.
• Geographical Indicator (GI) Tag : Due to its traditional and cultural significance and to preserve it the GI tag has been given to Warli Art.

The popularity of Warli art has led to its evolution. It is not being painted on red coloured cloth. Majority of the artists now dabble with watercolours and handmade paper or canvas cloth. However since the primary technique of simplistic drawing remains the same, the essence is still there. This has created new source of income for the community and also boosted its popularity world wide.

Warli art has been well preserved and has been passed on from many generations. Its simple narrations of traditional stories or nature have now started incorporating modern motifs of bicycles, cars, buildings, computers, aeroplanes and trains. The art has received immense platform bother nationally and internationally because of its simplicity in shape and colour and minimal supplies requirement. However, the art product is complex and beautiful, despite such minimalistic inputs just by using simple lines, triangles, squares, circles and dots. It has also been commercialised bringing fresh revenue streams for the tribal community. With GI tag recognition, rights and authenticity of the product will be protected leading to improved commercialisation.