Tender Wall Art

Tender — 25 museum-grade prints that set the mood. 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. Aipan chowkis are seat-diagrams drawn for life-rites: a naamkaran chowki is laid for a child's naming ceremony, with footprints and auspicious marks invoking protection and welcome into the household. 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. Gond painting comes from the Gond Adivasi communities of central India, with its best-known school formed by the Pradhan Gond of Patangarh and the wider Dindori region of Madhya Pradesh. The contemporary form is largely the legacy of Jangarh Singh Shyam (1962–2001), whose distinctive line-and-in-fill manner — every form bounded by a bold outline, then filled with rows of dots, dashes, commas and scales — became known as Jangarh Kalam and was carried on by his family and students.

Updated 22 Jun 2026