Aditee Zalte, Lecturer, MGM IFD
Hello everyone, last time we have shared some information about the latest printing techniques, in this article let us meet one of the oldest art ‘Pattachitra’- an art to convert the simple piece of cloth into an elegant art work. It has huge impact of the period when Sanskrit was our basic language for communication, the name ‘Pattachitra’ is self-descriptive as we know Patta means cloth & Chitra means picture which is created from different inspirations, As this art belongs to India since 5th century & the seeds giving birth to this Pattachitra had grown up in North-East region of India so it obviously replicates the stories of shree Jagannatha & traditions followed by the temples in Puri. The paintings also resemble the old murals of Odisha that are found in and around the religious centres of Puri, Konark, and Bhubaneswar. Since beginning of Pattachitra painting, Lord Jagannath, Lord Krishna has been major source of inspiration. But the most popular depiction on painting of Shri. Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra. The most detailed and skilled Pattachitra work is found in and around Puri, especially in the village of Raghurajpur. Now a days ‘Chitrakars’ also paint on palm leaves and tussar silk and have also created wall hangings and showpieces.
If we observe the Pattachitras carefully you can see how intricately the people have tried to express those ancient artworks. The paintings also depicts the stories of Ramayana, Mahabharata, Lord Jagannath, Radha Krishna and other popular legends. As we all know the how sharp these legends were & obviously there inspiring stories so this art has adopted the soul of these stories which can be seen from its en-riched use of color, its creative motifs and versatile designs. The bold, clean & sharp lines with fine touch of angular curves can be seen in paintings which shows the perspective of that culture & the landscapes pictures shows their wide range of thinking with different views.
These paintings are so traditional that the thinking of that culture can be seen while doing those paintings as the Master painting is done by the Man of House while the delicate work of painting is done by Woman from the house with fine & finish touch which is the most important part in any kind of artwork. The artists have used only natural vegetable and mineral colors. They prepare their own colors, white color is made from the conch-shells by powdering, boiling, and filtering. All this hard work needs a lot of patience later on which ultimately results in brilliance and permanence to the hue. Hingula’, a mineral color, is used for red, ‘Haritala’, king of stone ingredients, for yellow, and ‘Ramaraja’ a sort of indigo for blue. Pure lamp-black or black is prepared by burning coconut shells. Pattachitra painting mostly uses primary and bright colors, limited to red, yellow, indigo, black and white. The brushes are made of the hair from domesticated animals. It is a disciplined form of art with a set of rules and restrictions and floral border is a must around the paintings. You will get to know that all this hard-work really pays off when you would see those fascinating arts.
This was all about the basic introduction of Pattachitra, hope this will be helpful for all art-lovers out there. You can try the same in this quarantine period with the help of artist you have ignored in our day today life. So best of luck if you gonna try this, till then take care.
