Gond Art of Vidarbha: From Ancient Walls to Global Canvas
- thenewsdirt
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
What began as a flicker of creativity among the Gond tribe has grown into a vibrant art form, catching eyes far beyond the forests of Vidarbha.
Curiosity might nudge you to wonder how a practice so rooted in daily life has travelled across continents, and that’s where this tale begins.
From Mud to Canvas: The Early Days
Deep in Vidarbha, nestled among districts like Chandrapur and Gadchiroli, the Gond people have long turned their homes into galleries.
When a farmer built his house, instead of leaving the walls bare, he mixed charcoal with red soil and smeared it across the surface. His family joined in, dabbing plant sap to sketch birds and deer while their children pressed leaves into the damp mud.
This wasn’t just decoration, it was a conversation with their world, a way to mark festivals, honour gods, and chase away bad luck.
Historians reckon this habit stretches back 1,400 years, tied to the Gond tribe’s name, which comes from a Dravidian word for "green mountain." Their art mirrored that connection, pulling colours straight from the land.
Back then, no one called it "Gond painting." It was simply what you did as part of life, like sowing crops or singing at dusk.
The Pardhan subgroup, known for their knack with stories and music, often led the charge. They’d draw stick-figure humans alongside tigers and trees, keeping the shapes basic but bold. Cow dung and limestone powder thickened the mix, giving the walls a gritty texture that held the designs.
These weren’t meant to last forever. When rains washed them away, the family would start again, each new layer a fresh chapter.
The tools were as local as the tales they told. A twig could outline a peacock, and a handful of crushed flowers might stain the mud yellow.
Every stroke carried meaning. Earth, water, and air ruled by unseen forces, painted to keep the balance right. Festivals brought out the best of it, with dances and songs spilling over into the designs.
Yet, as farming dwindled and villages changed, this habit started fading. By the mid-20th century, many Pardhans had swapped brushes for labouring jobs, leaving the walls blank.
A Spark in the Eighties
Fast forward to the early 1980s, and something shifted. In Bhopal, an artist named J. Swaminathan set up Bharat Bhavan, a space to pull tribal creativity into the spotlight.
His team stumbled across a teenager named Jangarh Singh Shyam in Patangarh, a village not far from Vidarbha’s edge in Madhya Pradesh. At 17, Jangarh was already covering his family’s walls with dots and lines that seemed to dance. Swaminathan saw potential and handed him paper and canvas, urging him to try something new.
Jangarh didn’t hesitate. His first pieces exploded with colour, bright greens, deep reds, sharp blacks, telling stories of jungles and gods. Word spread fast. By 1982, his work was hanging in galleries in Paris and Tokyo. A Gond lad from nowhere was suddenly a name to know. He didn’t stop there.
He built a workshop, dubbed "Jangarh Kalam," training others to follow his lead. Vidarbha, just a stone’s throw away, felt the ripple. Gonds in Chandrapur and beyond began eyeing canvas too, swapping fragile mud for something that could travel.
This wasn’t a clean break from the past. The same old tricks, dots marking out shapes, then filled with colour, stuck around. But now, instead of crumbling after a monsoon, these paintings lasted decades.
Artists grabbed whatever worked, such as natural dyes from stones and petals and shop-bought paints when supplies ran low. The shift paid off. What was once a village oddity turned into a trade, feeding families who’d lost their footing in the fields.
Today’s Brushstrokes
Walk into a Gond artist’s home in Vidarbha now, and you’ll see a different scene. Canvas stretches across wooden frames, brushes replace twigs, and the air hums with focus.
The designs haven’t strayed far. Trees twist into spirals, birds fan out in neat rows, and elephants march beside rivers. Hindu gods pop up too, Ganesha’s trunk curling around a branch or Krishna playing his flute. I
t’s still about nature, still about the stories, but there’s a sharper edge to it, a nod to buyers half a world away.
Take a peek online, and you’ll find these pieces everywhere. Sites like Memeraki flog them with paintings of a lion mid-roar or a fish darting through reeds, priced for collectors in London or New York.
Bhopal’s State Tribal Museum has whole rooms of Gond work, and galleries in France and the UK aren’t far behind. Vidarbha’s artists might not get the same headlines as Jangarh’s crew, but they’re in the game, painting for cash as much as culture.
The process has a rhythm to it. An artist starts with a scatter of dots, plotting the shape like a map. Lines connect them, forming a skeleton such as a peacock’s neck or a tiger’s spine.
Then comes the colour, splashed in with care, turning flat outlines into something alive.
Jungle scenes dominate, but modern twists sneak in like a bird’s feathers might echo a city’s chaos, or a tree’s roots could hint at a drying river.
It’s practical too; wooden boxes, trays, even furniture get the treatment, sold to folk who want a bit of India in their living rooms.
Money matters here. For every canvas shipped overseas, a family eats better, maybe sends a kid to school. But it’s not all rosy. The old ways of painting walls for the sheer joy of it have mostly vanished.
Some worry the soul’s leaking out, that market demands are flattening what used to be wild and free. Others shrug; survival trumps sentiment when you’re scrabbling for a living.
So, where does this leave Vidarbha’s Gond art? Caught, perhaps, between two worlds, one foot in the forest, the other on a plane to Paris.
The dots and lines still sing of green mountains and ancient tales, but they’re louder now, heard in places the Gonds of old couldn’t have dreamed of.
Chandrapur and Gadchiroli keep the flame going, though you won’t find much written about their painters.
The big names, such as Jangarh or his nephew Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, hail from Madhya Pradesh, leaving Vidarbha’s lot in the shadows.
That’s not to say they’re idle. Every brushstroke proves they’re here, adapting, thriving even. The art’s gone global, sure, but it’s still theirs, born from the same soil that fed their ancestors.
It’s a craft that’s moved mountains, figuratively, at least, without losing its roots.
Next time you pass a painted wall or scroll through some online shop, pause. There’s a story there, and it’s still being written.
References
Indian Culture. (n.d.). Gond paintings. https://indianculture.gov.in/paintings/gond-paintings
Madhya Pradesh Tourism. (n.d.). Details about Gond tribal art and painting of India. https://www.mptourism.com/gond-art-details-about-gond-tribal-folk-art-and-painting-of-india.html
Memeraki. (n.d.). Gond art: Residing in the heart of India. https://www.memeraki.com/blogs/posts/gond-art-residing-in-the-heart-of-india
Exotic India Art. (n.d.). The Gonds of Vidarbha. https://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/gonds-of-vidarbha-bad348/
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