Shekhawati & Warli Paintings 20.6.2012
Shekhawati painting originate from Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, known as the open-air art gallery of Rajasthan .It is popular in the districts of Jhunjhunu, Chiru, and Sikar. They were hugely popular during their era, such was the demand that the skilled artists couldn’t paint fast enough. Even masons tried their hands at the paintings giving them a wonderful naivete and humorous touch. The subject matters of these paintings vary tremendously, from mythological stories and epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the local legends of battles and hunts, nearly all of which has been painted over.
The Warlis carry on a tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BCE. Their mural paintings are similar to those done between 500 and 10,000 BCE in the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, in Madhya Pradesh. Their extremely rudimentary wall paintings use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle and a square.Their paintings were monosyllbic. The circle and triangle come from their observation of nature, the circle representing the sun and the moon, the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees. Only the square seems to obey a different logic and seems to be a human invention, indicating a sacred enclosure or a piece of land. So the central motive in each ritual painting is the square, known as the “chauk” or “chaukat”, mostly of two types: Devchauk and Lagnachauk.