Warli Painting

Warli Paintings is believed to be dating back to 2500 or 3000 BC. These mural paintings bear a resemblance to those created in the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka. Scenes portraying hunting, fishing and farming, festivals and dances, trees and animals are used to surround the central theme of the painting. To represent animal and human bodies, two triangles are joined at the tip in which the upper one signifies the trunk while the lower one signifies the pelvis. The precarious equilibrium signifies balance of the universe. The walls are made of a mixture of branches, earth and cow dung, making a red ochre background for the wall paintings. They use a bamboo stick chewed at the end to make it as supple as a paintbrush. The wall paintings are done Only white colour for the paintings which is made by mixing rice paste to water and gum is also used to bind the paste. To make the paint brush the edge of the bamboo stick is chewed. The pared down pictorial language is matched by a rudimentary technique. The ritual paintings are usually done inside the walls of huts only on special occasions such as weddings or harvests.

Unique features:-

A very basic graphic vocabulary like a circle, a triangle and a square are used in these rudimentary wall paintings which are monosyllabic in nature. The circle represents the sun and the moon while the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees.

However, the square seems to be a human invention which indicates a sacred enclosure or a piece of land. Hence, the square also called ‘chauk‘ or ‘chaukat‘, is the central motive in every ritual painting. The Devchauk
and Lagnachauk are two types of square used in the wall paintings. The mother goddess, Palaghata, who is a symbol of fertility, can be found inside a Devchauk.