Traditional Art

Traditional art painting for online sale by Art Life Gallery

Traditional art is a wide term used for the art which has been present with a group of people or community for centuries and has been passed on from one generation to another. The medium of this art is not defined as it can be either on paper, cloth, on a wall, or in the form of sculptors. The reason why traditional art painting has stayed in the nation for such a long time is their depiction of the surrounding. Like any other art form, it tries to depict what is happening in the society at that point of time. Earlier they were used to document an important event or impress the kings and queens, but slowly it became so ingrained in the local public that it was almost difficult to separate culture from art. Therefore, most of the traditional art paintings have been found to showcase the ritualistic practices of a particular group of people or community, the gods or goddesses or deities they worshipped, their cultural heritage or family structures and so on. One thing which many historians and academics find hard is defining the distinction between folk art and traditional art. Since ‘folk art’ also means the art of the people and it also incorporates years of cultural heritage, it is sometimes called traditional madhubani painting or vice versa. The boundaries of these definitions seem blurred when we talk in the context of our country.

In the pre modern era when people used to live in jungles and near agrarian lands, traditional tribal art painting grew. This art form includes tribal art painting on the walls, on pottery, handmade things like baskets and beads etc.This kind of art form was later called folk art as well. Traditional Indian folk art painting therefore today portrays various tribal arts like gond art, mysore painting and madhubani painting which is traditional wall folk art. Traditional tribal art painting has been known to the world as something only a few communities do. But with modernisation, these communities retained their art by publishing them in exhibitions around the world. The tribal art techniques of painting on a cloth or paper covered with cow dung as done in madhubani paintings reached millions of people via various media networks. This helped traditional tribal art painting and traditional gond art gallery garner media attention not just nationally, but also internationally. The traditional aipan art also includes various schools of painting which developed in the early mediaeval period. Indian traditional art painting could be seen spanning across rajasthani school, which were not only famous for their cloth painting but also for their traditional rajasthani painting art. Other schools of traditional madhubani painting were, Dravidian school which stretched on the dravidian border in the south, Bengal school of painting which specifically grew in the Shantiniketan set up by Rabindranath Tagore and Mughal school of painting which was all the mughal leadership in the country.

The most important and interesting aspect of these paintings is that the artists used natural colours and painted with utmost passion. They had that zeal to protect their art form but they were neither pressurised enough to not enjoy it. In many parts of the country, it is still like a daily routine which they follow. If we take an example of rangoli, which is a art traditional painting made with powder colour, mostly during diwali in northern India and almost daily in the southern part of India. It is an art form which has been practised for thousands of years and yet people do it with their will and happiness to celebrate festivals. Indian traditional art painting has stayed with the people regardless of the changes that have happened over the years. It is still one of the most cherished art forms for the people of India.