India's folk and tribal paintings began as wall and floor decoration for weddings, harvests and worship, and later moved to paper and cloth.
Key facts
- Madhubani: women painted freshly plastered walls and floors; natural pigments (turmeric, indigo) applied with fingers, twigs or matchsticks; GI tagged; artists such as Sita Devi and Ganga Devi won the Padma Shri.
- Warli: white rice-paste pigment on mud walls, circles, triangles and squares showing daily life; Jivya Soma Mashe and his son Balu took it to paper in the 1970s.
- Pattachitra: scroll painting of Odisha and Bengal; the Odisha style centres on Jagannath, with Raghurajpur the best known village; Bengal's patuas sing as they unroll scrolls.
- Kalamkari: two styles, Srikalahasti (freehand drawing, temple themes) and Machilipatnam (block printed, Persian motifs); only natural dyes, in 23 steps.
- Phad: scrolls of about 15 feet (Pabuji) and 30 feet (Devnarayan) carried by Bhopa priest-singers; a master painter opened a school for outsiders in 1960, now Chitrashala in Bhilwara.
- Cheriyal scrolls: up to 40 feet long, red backgrounds, shown by Kaki Padagollu storytellers; GI tag 2008.
Why exams ask about it
Which state, which community, which deity and what the name means are the four standard questions for every style.