South Indian Art

South India has a rich history of visual arts, performing arts and architecture. The temples in South India house intricately detailed carvings, sculptures and wall murals due to the patronage of the rulers. The traditional South Indian art forms such as Kalamkari, Tanjore paintings and other forms focused on the divine and the mystical. Ravi Varma was one of the pioneers to also include regular people in his paintings of women from Kerala and rulers from other parts of India along with his mythological paintings.
The current contemporary South Indian artists have focused on the men & women in rural settings (Kandi Narsimlu, Thota Vaikuntam, Laxman Aelay and Kappari Kishan , the everyday sights of the ruralscapes (Siva Balan), the architecture and landscapes of South India (Iruvan Karunakaran, Manjunath Wali) and the cultural side of South India featuring people & animals (Mohammed Osman).