Gond Art

Gond fine art is a type of folk and ethnic art that is practised by one of the largest tribes in the country – the Gonds – who are chiefly from Madhya Pradesh but also based in pockets of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa. The creations of Gond painters are ingrained in their folk tales and traditions, and thus storytelling is a base constituent of every painting.

The Gonds are the largest Adivasi clan in India. “We are Dravidians and our beginnings can be traced back to the pre-Aryan era. We refer to ourselves as Koi or Koiture, and our language is correlated to Telugu and other Dravidian vernaculars.”

Gond art works can be depicted as ‘on line work’ because the art is fashioned out of vigilantly drawn lines. Lines are utilised to express a sense of movement in tranquil images. Dots and dashes are furthered to communicate a superior sense of movement and augment the amount of detail. Another very arresting facade of Gond paintings is the use of brilliantly flamboyant colours such as white, red, blue, and yellow. The paints are generally derived organically from materials like charcoal, coloured soil, plant sap, mud, flowers, leaves, and cow dung.