🇬🇧 Gond Art
- melissamalir
- Jun 7, 2023
- 5 min read
From the very first plans of what I was to do during my gap year, learning to paint Gond art was one of my main objectives. I’ve always loved the imaginative, colourful world that Gond art paints, and it has been one of my favourite Indian art forms since I first layed eyes on one of the colourful branch-antlered deer.
So when I asked a Gond artist in Delhi’s craft market who was selling his family’s works if there was any way he could teach me about his art and he warmly agreed, I was delighted.
Through sheer good fortune, this artist happened to be Sambhaw Shyam, part of a well known gond family, whose parents, Anand Shyam and Kala Bai, were part of the generation of Gond artists who popularised this art form.
In fact, traditionally, Gond art was mostly abstract shapes used to decorate houses in the villages, and apparently, Kala Bai was one of the very first artists to use the art style on paper to paint the trees and animals that we are familiar with today.
Before we start, a quick bit of context about what Gond art actually is:
Gond art is a tribal art from that originates from the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, specifically by the Pardhan Gond people.
As is the case with many tribal communities in India, the gond people have their own language, culture and belief system, separate from the rest of India. This belief system is based in nature worship, celebrating the trees and animals that surround the villages. As Anand Shyam told me in his friendly broken english, “I am nature’s man, the sky is my father, the earth is my mother“.
This reverence for the natural world can clearly be seen in Gond Art- trees, birds and animals always feature prominently in gond paintings.
You can read more about gond art and its themes here.
A few months after our fortuitous meeting in Delhi, I made my way to their studio in Bhopal where every morning for four days I was able to learn the foundations of Gond art.
With only four sessions, my teaching had to be done relatively quickly, and I managed to squeeze out 3 paintings in varying amounts of detail.
My first two were copies of pieces by Anand Shyam, the father.
The first, which you can see here, is a deer with branches for antlers on which birds are perched. This motif is a common one in Gond Art; it is one of the first images that comes up on google when you look up the art form, and is the representation of the tree of life in Gond tradition. I absolutely love this motif, it really sparks the imagination
The second a lion with his cub (gond art felines are my favourite; they are the happiest, friendliest creatures you could imagine).
As you can see below with my lion painting, Gond art is generally done in three steps: sketching, colour blocking and decoration.
Both of these paintings were more or less exact copies of Mr Shyam’s work, with only slight variations in colour.
In Gond art, each artist has their own unique style of patterning, which serves as a sort of signature, meaning that each piece will be recognisable as one of their own by those in the know, so while the first two pieces I did were more about getting familiar with the style and use of colour, the third was far more about experimentation and my own use of patterns.
So on the third day, Sambhaw showed me examples of his family’s works, pointing out each person’s way of patterning. On the left here are the (somewhat illegible) notes I took, with recreations of the patterns in the corner.
He explained that the patterns always had to be as uniform as possible, and follow the direction that what they are representing would follow. For example, when decorating a deer, the strokes must follow the direction that the grain of the fur would follow. Likewise with bird feathers or tree bark.
Another way you could tell the difference between artists is how they chose to represent a certain animal’s anatomy. So in this work on the left by the late Kala Bai for instance, we can recognise not only her distinctive patterning style, but where other gond artists would usually paint only one of the elephant’s ears, Kala Bai painted both.
Furthermore, there are certain motifs and images that a certain artist comes up with, that becomes just as much a signature as their style, Anand Shyam’s fabulous four headed cat being a prime example of this. If you were to see this image you could pretty much guarantee that it was the work of Mr Shyam or his son.
I actually asked him what the inspiration for this marvellous beast was, and if I understood correctly, a four headed cat was once born in his village, which was taken to be a sign of good fortune.
You can find more information on the numerous different patterning styles and ways of painting here.
Sambhaw also told me that since this art form is still quite new, only a couple of generations or so old, the new generation of artists like himself, is experimenting more with realism, colour and materials. The pieces below are some examples of this new trend among younger Gond artists.
These pieces show some of this experimentation with blending of colours instead of the traditional flat colours, the creative filling of the animals (I absolutely love the neck of the deer in the first image), the play with impressionism with the leaves, the increase in realism (both in terms of shape and colour) and finally the use of different colours and bases which you can see in the last picture
For my final painting, Sambhav’s presented me with several of his works for me to chose from, to copy and then fill as I pleased.
I decided on this peacock because I loved the concept and the symmetry of it, but the detail of each leaf being a little bird face is what sealed the deal. Also, as this piece is black and white, I figured it would be more of a challenge to decide on colours without being influenced by my reference.
I neglected to take pictures of the process, but this is my version of the peacock:
Overall, I‘m really happy with it. I was a little unsure of the colours at fisrt, but I’m really pleased with how well it all came out.
I feel that gond art fits in so nicely with my personal densely patterned drawing style, so I’m excited to do some experimenting, and I already have some ideas of pieces I can do with what I’ve learned.
I am immensely pleased and incredibly grateful to have been able to learn about this art form from two such prominent artists in the discipline. I only wish my stay in Bhopal had been longer!
I really love the final piece!!!