Warli Art

Meaning:

Warli art has wide approval just because of its eye-catching nature. These days, dress materials that bear this art form has wide acceptance. Tribal people who live in the hilly and seaside regions of the southwestern part of India, as well as in the contiguous areas (basically, this region comes in the Gujarat-Maharashtra border) are the originators of this special variety of art. They create wonderfully designed wall paintings, by making use of the simple geometrical shapes such as square, circle, and triangle.

History:

By tradition, the women folk of Malkhar and Warli tribes (these ethnic groups belong to the Maharashtra region of western India) are the ones who create this wonderful art form. Though, as per the present estimation, this spectacular art form existed even during the period of 2500-3000 BC, it was only in the early seventies the form started to gain wide acceptance and was began to be termed as the ‘Warli Art’. Because these tribal people were ignorant about various specific language forms or about writing words, they used this media for communicating with each other. Moreover, they made it a point to impart this communication style to the coming generations. In the early days, Warli art portrayed the essence of pastoral life and the walls of mud homes were the places where they created such designs.

Technique:

In general, the color used for the Warli art is white. They create this specific shade by mixing cooked rice, gum, and water appropriately. The color paste gets a firm blend because of the usage of quality gum. They used a rudimentary form of brush for painting, created by crushing one end of a small bamboo stick to make it pliable. The depiction of animals and humans was done by drawing two triangles that was linked at the top portion. Normally, the themes of these paintings were fishing, hunting, festivals, farming, animals, trees, etc.

Distinguishing Warli Art

It is easy to recognize this art form as it will have certain fundamental graphical designs such as triangles, circles, squares, etc. It must be specially noted that these symbols were hauled out from the natural world; the circle got originated from the sun and moon. Similarly, it was from the triangle shaped tree tops and mountains, the invention of triangles took place. It must be understood that each sign in Warli art has definite significance and sense. In this painting style, the human life circle is characterized by drawing males and females in coiled or concentric designs. The physical shapes of animals or humans are created using two triangles that are connected at the top. Generally, the main designs will be having fishing, hunting, festivals, farming, dancing scenes. Designs of animals and trees are also seen.

 

Warli Art on Cloth

In our time, Warli art is done on dress materials also and these have great recognition. However, you must be very much prudent while purchasing such items; you can recognize Warli art by studying the motifs.

At Sanskriti, you will get beautiful fabrics(sarees and dupattas) depicting Warli art. Visit our website for more details. We take special attention to give close-range pictures of these materials; you can clearly select the desired pieces.

  

 

Notable Facts:

  1. Conventionally, warli art is performed during marriages, and this was termed as ‘Lagnacha Chauk’. The meaning of the term is ‘marriage painting’, and this painting work is only done by married women whose husbands are alive.
  2. Usually, warli paintings will not have any straight line drawings.
  3. The basic belief of the tribal people was that they are able to evoke the divine power through this paintings.

 

 

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