Tribal art in all its beauty!

Tribal paintings, taken from the collection of TRIBES INDIA, Saura-odisha, Pithora-Gujarat, Warli-Maharashtra and Gond-Madhya Pradesh were displayed at the recently concluded “Aadi Chitra” exhibition at Kalakriti Art Gallery. Artists who worked on the pieces include Pradeep Maravi, a Gond tribal painter from Madhya Pradesh; Dinesh Gomang, Lanjia Savara tribe from Odisha; Dev Singh Rathwa, tribal painter from Gujarat.

The creative expressions of about 40 tribal artists belonging to Gond, Bhil, Rathwa, Saura, Warli and Muria tribes of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Maharashtra & Chhattisgarh respectively were displayed. The works invariably depicted positive themes and imagination as the main subject, ranging from religious to secular in nature, with gods and goddesses to animals and birds, life cycles, farming, harvest, celebration and the five basic elements of mother earth.

The themes and subjects were presented with immaculate precision that the purity and unadulterated love of tribals for the nature evolved into a unique style that reflects the history and culture of their respective tribe. It is this uniqueness which the artists attempted to project through “Aadi Chitra”.

These tribal art forms have enthralled the global market and have carved a niche with such both national and international exposure, as a result of which, lives of the tribal artists have been transformed. The encouragement they received enabled them to rise above the cultural fences and dip the universe in paints. The exhibition was an excellent blend of artistic ecstasy as well as cultural confluence.