Warli Painting

Description
Warli painting, one of the most fascinating forms of Indian folk paintings. These paintings are the symbolic representation of the life-style of the Worli tribes of Maharashtra. They are performed on the mud walls of most houses, predominantly in white, depicting various human aspects engrossed in varied activities. These tribal paintings are self-generated reflections of folk life, customs and beliefs.


Here tribal myths, captions and illusion are interlacing with a sense of equilibrium and fashion. The work is defended by the Government Ministry of Tribal Affairs. It targets to speed up economic evolution of tribal people, some of the poorest in India, through commercializing their artwork on a sustainable ground.

History
The Warlis inhabit hamlets of roofed mud-huts, which are constructed in such a way so that they all fence in a central cell. They are primarily an agriculture-qualified tribe. According to Historians, the Warli tradition can be retraced to the Neolithic Age between 2,500 BC and 3,000 BC. During the harvest time, weddings and births, their houses are decorated with a vocabulary of designs. This custom gave rise to what we now know as the Warli Painting.

The Medium and Style
Warli paintings are qualified by the minimalistic fashion utilized to say the soundest things. The use of color is confined to an everlasting white against earthen backgrounds. Geometrical designs predominate most warli paintings. Dots and crooked lines are the fundamental units of these compositions. The charm of these single colored compositions lies in their lack of pretentiousness in expressing the profound.

Symbolism
Helical shapes of men and women and concentric circular designs in Warli Paintings are symbols of the circle of life, in fact most of these apparently simple paintings abound in symbolization. The harmony and balance portrayed in these paintings is thought to mean the harmony and balance of the universe of discourse.

Devoid of Religious Icons
Unlike other tribal art forms the Warli Paintings do not employ religious iconography, making it a more worldly art form. The philosophy of a way of life, particularly those of tribal companies, is best pictured through colorful icons. Trees, birds, men and women get together to produce a composite whole in Tribal Paintings, and the paintings of the Warli tribe of Maharashtra are the most merry festivity of that particular philosophy.

The impulses and moods of tribal life make it an interesting themes, which is why Warli Paintings are much more than designs on walls, they are authentic and reliable depictions of a way of life.

Rhythm
The everyday life of a village interrupted only by the peeping of birds. Cold nights around bonfires with merry making men and women, the gurgle of streams that flow by the Warli hamlets, a shepherd playing a native instrument….This is the rhythm of the Warli way of life and its beautifully captured in simple understated images in white.

Common people imagination, beliefs and customs are spontaneously verbalized in these monochromatic tribal paintings. From the cracked and unknown walls of the village of Warli.

Warli, an Indian folk art painting, has locomoted across borders and are now the cherished possessions of many of collector and art lover.