Warli Painting, good for aesthetics, but do you know it’s history?

We all are fascinated with Warli prints, we add them to our home decor to add aesthetics, also, beautiful dupattas we drape with warli paintings give us that traditional yet classy look, very common to find, but do you know the origins? 

The Warli painting tradition is originally practiced by tribes in Maharashtra, an example of folk-style paintings. The Warli tribe is one of the largest in India, known to be located outside Mumbai. The paintings revolve around marriages that were not known till the 1970s even though they date back to the 10th century AD. 

The central concept of the paintings revolves around the elements of mother nature. The main occupation being farming, a large source of food for the tribe. The tribes greatly respect nature and wildlife for their resources. The artists paint on the clay walls of the clay huts using it as their canvases similar to the cave paintings concept.

The interesting part of these paintings are made using basic concepts like geometric shapes like circles, triangles, and squares, all representing an element of nature. The circle represents celestial bodies like the sun and moon. The triangle represents mountains and conical trees. Interestingly, the squares show human innovations or even a piece of land. The central motif in each ritual painting is the square, known as the “chauk” or “chaukat”, mostly of two types known as Devchauk depicts goddess in between and Lagnachauk.

The Warli only paint with a white pigment made from a mixture of rice flour and water, with gum as a binder. A bamboo stick is chewed at the end to give it the texture of a paintbrush. Walls are painted only to mark special occasions such as weddings, festivals or harvests. 

But in the history of Warli, the name reflects is of Jivya Soma Mashe, he was recognized by great leaders. He broke the monotony of a married women-wall art tradition and experimented with non-ritual paintings and created new images depicting everyday life.

These paintings most resemble prehistoric cave paintings and their origins have been dated back to 2500 to 3000 BCE, as stated in Yashodhara Dalmia’s book “Painted World of the Warli”. The visual resemblance to these cave paintings further adds value to it being prehistoric paintings. 

Well, that was it for the Warli paintings, hope that you remember the history of Warli before you buy any article with the beautiful painting.