Tribal art is the visual arts and material culture of indigenous people. Warli is one of the Tribal art forms. India is a place of culture and Warli is a cultural folk style art. It is created by the tribal people from North Sahyadri Range in Maharastra, India.
Warli painting traditions in Maharashtra are among the finest examples of folk culture. The Warli painting is created with the concept of Mother Nature and elements of nature. This type of painting was not discovered until the 1970s.Warli art is believed to have originated 2000years ago.
The Warli painter’s main way of their life is farming and a large source of food for the tribe. So they greatly respect nature and they create the Warli art by centering this. The Wrli artists use their clay huts as the canvas.Basically this art is too simple to draw. It is characterized as geometrical shapes. The walls are only decorated to mark special occasions like weddings,festivals or harvests.
For this painting the preparation should be great. According to the Warli artists, to draw Warli on the clay huts there is some pre – preparation . Firstly , the walls should be covered by cow-dung, next earth and lastly with the reddish-brown terracotta paste. Then a paste of powdered rice and gum has to be prepared and as pens the artists use a thin stick of Baharu tree. And the upcoming result is the Warli paint. One interesting thing is there is no straight line in the Warli paint. The art is usually crooked lines, dots , circle , square , triangles and others geometric design.
We must say that whoever discovers this art style he should be too intelligent because this art style has a symbol in every touch. This painting is a visual poetry where its evry symbols stand for a significance. Like, the circle represents the sun and moon. The square represents the sacred land and the triangle represents trees and mountains. Square is the central motif in most of this type of painting. There is one more thing by which you will be more interested that is the central motif of this paint is such as pottery sense of hunting , fishing or farming , dancing or festive mode etc. Actually this type of painting indicates the daily life of villagers , which is apart from other modern art styles. You can notice in this art the ‘Tarpa dance’- actually tarpa is like any instrument , different men play it turn by turn. When music plays the villagers including men and women join their hands and move in a circle around the tarpa players.
But here I have a point to tell you that Jivya Soma Mashe , is the artist in Thane district who has played a great role in making Warli paint famous.
But all art is disappearing in this digital life . it is a matter of concern but all are not the same in this world. A few kind hearted people are still the same as they were in the past , and keep this wonderful traditional culturing art. Thus we can mention a saviour of this culture , Govardhan Eco Village in Thane district that keeps this painting alive by providing Warli artists a platform to display their art. In 2016 a group of Japanese artists made an effort to keep this art alive. They adopted the Ganjad village in Palghar district. To promote this art , this Japanese group has also been decorating huts according to the formula of Warli paint. By the way, Dahanu is one more village to keep this painting alive .
Categories: Culture and History, World