Warli Art: A Timeless Tradition

 

It all started from 2000 years ago. A tribe that lives in the Sahyadri Mountains and the coastline areas of northen Maharashtra is called as warli tribe. This tribe is downrated to the earth and follows the customs, traditions, and ways of living, unlike the bustling lives of cities. The warli tribe is God gifted with a special folk art which is further identified with their tribal name - warli art. Their life is all about farming practices and they respect nature and wildlife.     

 

The characteristics and style of Warli are unique. Warli people give the central motif in their ritual paintings. It is surrounded by scenes of their day today activities, like hunting, fishing, and farming. Festivals and dance are common scenes depicted in the ritual paintings. They use basic geometrical symbolic shapes repeatedly in their paintings. Each shape has symbolic significance. The circle represents the sun and moon, the triangles represents trees and mountains, the square represents sacred lands and it is the central motif of most of the paintings.. The"chauk" the mother goddess symbolizes fertility. Their precarious equilibrium symbolizes the balance of the universe. 

Warli folk art is not introduced to the world until the 1970s. This traditional art took a radical turn when an artist from the Thane district Jivya Soma Mashe and his son Balu Mashe started to paint. He played a great role in making warli wall art more popular and introduced it to the world. He has been honored by national and central-level awards for his paintings. In 2011, he was awarded the Padmashri and hence, he is known as the father of wall paintings. 

The conventional way of making warli paintings requires pre-preparation. It is usually created on walls which are made from branches, and red bricks that result in a red ochre background. The paints are made from a mixture of rice paste and water and gum as a binder. A bamboo stick chewed at one end to give the texture of a paintbrush. They paint walls to show special occasions like weddings and harvest. 

Warli tribe started the trend of paintings on walls to celebrate their happiness or events like weddings, harvests, and festivals. Today warli folk art is introduced with business strategies. Now in the market warli work is growing in demand for enigmatic art. Warli paintings are moved from walls to canvas paper, clothes, and lifestyle products including home decor and accessories. India's one of the most popular beverage brands Coca-Cola launched a campaign featuring warli paintings to highlight the ancient culture and represent togetherness. the campaign name was "Come Home Deepawali" targeting modern youth. Artists acceptance of new ideas helps them to face new challenges from market demands. 

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