Folk & Tribal Indian Paintings
Among the many types of folk art in India & types of traditional art in India, each style emerges from a specific ecology, belief system, and rhythm of daily life. They’re made on mud walls, cloth, tree bark - even rice flour kolam on village thresholds. Each of these forms broadcasts a community memory: a ritual, a celebration, an everyday god.
1. Madhubani (Mithila) Paintings
Originating in Bihar’s Mithila region, Madhubani is a festival of color and line - geometric, symbolic, teeming with flowers, village life, and gods. Traditionally painted by women, with twigs and natural dyes, these works pulse with personal mythology. It’s said that acclaimed artist Baua Devi once hid her nascent sketches beneath cooking flour sacks so the men wouldn’t discover her bright ambitions.
Artists like Sita Devi, who brought Madhubani to the global stage, and contemporary voices such as Karpuri Devi, show how a once-private rite became a language for everyone-resilient and ever-evolving.
2. Warli Paintings
Near the Sahyadris in Maharashtra, Warli art lives in fleeting earthy circles and triangles, documenting monsoon dances, daily toil, and harvest. The Warli’s restricted palette (rice paste on red mud) is a local code-sacred in simplicity. Jivya Soma Mashe, a Warli pioneer, transformed a domestic, ephemeral style into works adorning walls of global museums-yet always returning home to the monsoon.
Gond Paintings
From Madhya Pradesh, the Gond community translates jungle folklore through sinuous lines and dots, each animal or tree breathing with movement. Durga Bai and Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, descendants of legendary Jangarh Singh Shyam, use ink and acrylics as their ancestors did: as spells and songs, each canvas a microcosm.
4. Kalamkari Paintings
Kalamkari, from Andhra and Telangana, means “pen craft.” These narrative scrolls-swirling with epics, deities, and flora-are crafted with bamboo pens and mineral dyes. Thota Vaikuntam, a modern maestro, channels village life into kalamkari motifs, blending traditional forms with bold, contemporary vision.
5. Phad Paintings
These Rajasthani scrolls come alive at dusk, as a community bard (bhopa) narrates stories of Pabuji or Devnarayan. The paintings, sometimes 30 feet long, are theatrical-meant to be sung, not just seen. Shree Lal Joshi, the late Phad master, described each scroll as “a moving shrine.”
6. Pattachitra Paintings
Odisha and Bengal’s Pattachitra scrolls (literally, ‘cloth pictures’) echo Krishna's childhood, Jagannath lore, and vivid natural pigments. The Mohapatra family, renowned storytellers, keep this thousand-year-old tradition vibrantly present, adapting to new stories but never losing the scent of tempera and lampblack.
7. Saura Paintings
Sauras, Odisha’s ancient tribe, create paintings as ritual offerings, their stick-like forms mapping genealogies and crop cycles. Their art is delicate-a spectral dance of ancestors across walls, reminiscent of ethnographic field notes rendered with empathy.
8. Cheriyal Scroll Paintings
From Telangana, Cheriyal is playful, bold, and laden with local satire. Artists like D. Vaikuntam and Padma Shri awardee D. Shyam Prasad bring the tradition to national galleries, bridging village tales and urban narratives with scroll and brush.
9. Thangka Paintings
Steeped in Tibetan Buddhist iconography, Thangkas-now also a tradition in Indian Himalayan regions-employ intricate symmetry and pigment rituals. Artists such as Gendun Choephel and Tashi Mannox speak to discipline: “A Thangka is meditated into existence.”
10. Bhil Painting
Bhil tribes of Central India tell stories with colored dots and animal spirits. Sher Singh Bhil and Lado Bai transform mud walls into histories-modern artists worldwide draw on their trance-like visual language.
11. Manjusha Painting
A temple form from Bihar, Manjusha painting once accompanied oral epics of Bishahari Devi, goddess of snakes. Revived after colonial-era bans, contemporary artists blend historic narrative with present-day flair-evidence of art forms resurrected from almost-extinction.
12. Aipan Art
From Uttarakhand, Aipan is an ephemeral threshold ritual-white rice designs against red ochre floors, drawn for auspicious moments. Contemporary artists experiment with permanence, using canvas to transpose this sacred domestic art into public memory.
13. Mata Ni Pachedi Art
Gujarat’s Vaghri community paints shrines for Mata, the Mother Goddess, on fabric. Known as the “Kalamkari of Gujarat,” this form pulses with reds, blacks, and fine penwork-a communal offering that travels, much like beliefs themselves.
14. Pithora Painting
Ritual meets abstraction in Pithora, a tribal Mandala painted by Bhil and Rathwa groups in Gujarat/Madhya Pradesh. Each is begun with prayer, the brushwork improvisational, horses and ancestors summoned in pigment.
15. Kavad Painting
From Rajasthan, Kavad is both art and object-a painted wooden shrine with doors that open to unfold nested stories. Today, artists like Suresh Sharma wield this “portable temple” as a form of populist storytelling, from villages to biennales.
Every folk painting pulses with contradiction: timeless yet popular, sacred yet found in city apartments. Distinct types of Indian paintings are not "pure." They blend, borrow, subvert because culture, like paint, always seeps into the cracks.
Classical & Traditional Indian Paintings
Among the vast spectrum of traditional artwork of India, the classical schools stand apart for their refinement, lineage, and devotional purpose. These classical traditions were forged in courts, temples, and ateliers. Painters here were both chroniclers and alchemists: turning devotion, luxury, and love into visual poetry. Together, these schools define what many scholars refer to as traditional Indian painting styles, shaped by courtly patronage, ritual life, and regional aesthetics.
1. Pichwai Painting
Originating in Nathdwara, Rajasthan, Pichwai’s massive cloth hangings depict tales of Shrinathji, a child-God adored by millions and collectors alike. Gold leaf, lush lotuses, and festival scenes saturate each panel. Veteran artist Bhupendra Singh Shekhawat remembers inheriting 300-year-old pigment formulas-"each shade a guarded secret." It’s no surprise that Pichwai panels are counted among the most famous paintings of India, treasured for their scale, symbolism, and sacred aura. Browse through ArtFlute’s pichwai paintings collection featuring works of Kuldeepak Soni.
2. Kalighat Painting
Emerging in 19th-century Kolkata, Kalighat painting narrates urban life-shrewd, satirical, and brimming with social commentary. The patuas (scroll artists) reimagined myth in the guise of everyday Bengalis. Artists like Jamini Roy, originally trained in Western academic style, drew from Kalighat linework to revolutionize Indian modernism.
3. Tanjore (Thanjavur) Paintings
Tanjore’s gilded panels radiate with gold, semi-precious stones, and religious themes. Each oudh canvas traces the lineage of Maratha patronage. Studio anecdotes tell of artisans meticulously rubbing gold foil till it “sings” against the velvet.
4. Mysore Paintings
Mysore emerged as a cousin (and sometimes rival) to Tanjore, favoring finer brushwork and gesso. Stories of Krishna, palace women, and Mughal visitors meld courtly grace with precise iconography.
5. Kerala Murals
On the walls of ancient Kerala temples, murals of gods unfurl across cool stone-ochre, green, and charcoal dancing in restrained patterns. Today, artists like Sadanandan and K.K. Hebbar reinterpret this tradition for modern canvases and even architecture.
6. Miniature Paintings
From Mughal ateliers to Rajasthan’s Kishangarh, miniatures compress narrative, beauty, and status into palm-sized journals. Persian courtly idioms, Rajput romance, and pictorial innovation-these paintings were meant to be held, pored over, hidden. As some of the most significant historical paintings of India, miniatures shaped how love, courtly life, and empire were visually imagined. Popular modern artists like Waswo X. Waswo collaborates with traditional miniaturists, bridging history and irony.
7. Rajput Paintings
Rajput painting cuts across styles-Mewar’s fierce reds, Kangra’s lyric green, Bundi’s playful spirit-sprawling epics, lovers, and court scenes. The process is social: multiple painters specializing (face, dress, flora). Each folio an experiment.
8. Mughal Paintings
Mughal atelier painting, born under Akbar and Jahangir, melded Persian elegance and Indian energy. Master artists like Basawan and Abu’l Hasan chronicled empire and myth, with botanical accuracy and regal flourish. Their legacy haunts today’s fashion and cinema.
9. Pahari PaintingS
From the Himalayan valleys, Pahari paintings overflow with romance-Radha and Krishna, misty hills, and pastel trysts. Nainsukh, a local legend, depicted royal intrigue with wry humor and poetic lightness.
Each of these traditional paintings in India reveals something uneasy: creation under patronage (temple, court, colonial official), but also subversion-the secret symbols, playful satire, personal signatures left in an emperor’s shadow.
FAQs About Famous Painting Forms of India
1. What makes Indian folk paintings unique?
Folk paintings of India blend locality, ritual use, and personal vision. They aren’t just decorative; they map festivals, seasons, and cosmology, forging intimacy between art, artist, and community. Taken together, these different paintings of India show how every region expresses beauty, devotion, and dissent in its own visual language.
2. What materials are commonly used in these types of Indian paintings?
Artists employ everything from rice flour and mineral pigments to silk, gold leaf, vegetable dyes, and even cow dung-rendering each style intrinsically local, a direct outcome of geography and history.
3. Where to buy authentic folk Indian paintings online?
On ArtFlue you can buy indian paintings that are curated, original and artist-signed works with direct provenance. Always look for transparency in artist attribution.
4. Which is the most famous traditional Indian painting style?
Arguably, Pichwai and Madhubani reign as India’s global art ambassadors-celebrated for their visual scale, storytelling, and ritual function.
5. What is the oldest form of Indian painting?
Bhimbetka’s prehistoric cave paintings (~10,000 BCE) are India’s most ancient, but among traditional art forms of India, mural traditions like Ajantha, Kerala, and Pithora lead for antiquity.
6. How do Indian paintings differ from Western paintings?
Indian painting forms prioritize narrative and symbolic meaning over realism. While Western art historically favoured perspective and anatomy, Indian traditions seek emotional truth, devotion, and decorative logic.
7. How can I identify an authentic Indian painting?
Study the materials, signature, and regional codes. True pieces often show layered process marks, natural pigments, and, crucially, a story known by both artist and community. Understanding the major distinct types of Indian paintings helps collectors and enthusiasts navigate an art history that spans thousands of years.
