Famous Paintings India

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The most vibrant and festal wall paintings are found in Rajasthan. The interior and exterior walls of palaces as well as ordinary dwellings are an unabashed paean to color. They are made over completely with huge frescoes of elephants, horses, and camels, scenes of royal processions and exciting hunts as well as depictions of mythological characters and stories. Painted wet on lime plaster in mineral colors the paintings slowly became embedded in the wall giving the effect of inlay work of colorful stone on white marble, another specialty of the region.

These decorative paintings from India have a very strong religious tradition. They have a symmetrical composition as they are meant to be placed in house-shrines for meditation. Phad paintings are required to show a large number of objects in one scroll. The artists do this very skillfully by highlighting the basic motive of the painting and still showing all the ritualistic objects in krishnalilas and number of soldiers in a battlefield. The use of monochrome areas in the background helps make a oil painting simple if necessary. Well organized, with bright colors bold outlines make this decorative Phad Paintings more appealing and attractive. The paintings have red and yellow colors in prominence, predominately red and green scrolls being the popular ones. Phad paintings are now available in smaller panels, rather than a scroll, portraying single incidents or characters from the epics, which have made them more popular in the market.

The temple and monastery paintings in Tamil Nadu and Andhra as well as the murals at the Padmanabhapuram Palace in Kerala reflect their regional skills. The Rathva tribals of Gujarat and the Bhilala tribals of Madhya Pradesh in central India paint on the mud walls of their houses the myth of creation. Sometimes airplanes and clocks also make their appearance in this essentially tribal worldview.

The Warli tribals of Maharashtra paint on the cowdung and mud plastered walls of their huts. These are like mandalas, ritualized diagrams conceptualized in white rice paste. Of course, all over the country right from the plains of Uttar Pradesh, the old Indian custom of creating rice paste paintings on the walls and floor of the houses in honour of deities or simply wishing for good things to come their way is common.