Devotional Wall Art

Devotional — 164 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Kalighat Pat grew up in 19th-century Kolkata, painted by migrant patua (chitrakar) scroll-painters who settled near the Kalighat Kali temple and sold quick watercolour souvenirs to pilgrims. Working on mill-made paper with a bold single black brush outline and soft 'boneless' shaded strokes on a plain ground, they painted gods and goddesses alongside what is often called India's first modern social satire — sharp, affectionate caricatures of the colonial 'babu' and the hypocrisies of Calcutta life. Aipan is the ritual floor- and wall-art of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, made traditionally by Kumaoni women with white rice-paste (biswar) drawn by fingertip onto a geru — red-ochre earth — ground. A Durga yantra is drawn for the goddess at Navratri, with Ashtami — the eighth day — a high point of the worship; interlocking triangles, lotus rings, conch, footprints and swastika are the auspicious vocabulary of the rite. Bonalu is a Telangana folk festival honouring the goddess Mahankali, observed through the month of Ashada (July–August) and centred on the temples of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Women carry bonam — cooked rice with milk and jaggery in a decorated pot, topped with neem and a lamp — to the temple as an offering, while Pothuraju, a whip-cracking male devotee, leads the procession.

Updated 22 Jun 2026