An old wall-painting practice; on paper and canvas since the early 1980s · Madhya Pradesh: Patangarh in Dindori district, and Bhopal
Gond painting
Painting by the Pardhan Gond community of Madhya Pradesh, carried from house walls onto paper in the 1980s by Jangarh Singh Shyam. Animals, trees and deities, filled in with dots, dashes and fine lines.
How to recognise it
- Large shapes filled with dots, dashes, small curves and cross-hatching
- Animals, birds, trees and deities from Gond myth and story
- A pen-drawn outline; the style is called Jangarh Kalam, kalam meaning pen
- Ink and acrylic on paper or canvas, often in bright colour
The Pardhans are a sub-group of the Gond people, traditionally the community’s bards. Their homes were painted with deities, myths and legends, using colours from leaves, flowers, cow dung and earth. In October 1981 scouts from Bharat Bhavan, the new arts centre in Bhopal, found Jangarh Singh Shyam, then about nineteen, in the village of Patangarh. Its director, the painter J. Swaminathan, persuaded him to come to Bhopal and work as an artist. Jangarh’s paintings were in Bharat Bhavan’s opening exhibition in February 1982.
He was among the first Gond artists to work on paper and canvas, and the new manner took his name: Jangarh Kalam. He received Madhya Pradesh’s Shikhar Samman in 1986, painted the Vidhan Bhavan in Bhopal and the dome of Bharat Bhavan, and showed in Magiciens de la terre at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1989. He died in 2001, during a residency in Japan.
Others followed, many from his own family and village. His wife Nankusia Bai became a painter. Bhajju Shyam made The London Jungle Book, published in 2004, and received the Padma Shri in 2018. Durga Bai Vyam, who learned ritual wall painting from her mother as a child, received the Padma Shri in 2022. In Patangarh today, by one villager’s estimate, nearly four homes in five have at least one painter.
What to look for
The infill. Each painter fills shapes in their own way, and the patterns repay close looking. Know the painter’s name; this is a tradition of named individuals now, not anonymous craft. A Jangarh Kalam painting on canvas and a ritual wall painting are related, but they are not the same thing.