Exhibit of the week- 158
(08th to 14th June 2023)

BAGHA avam VYADHA
A traditional Pattachitra (cloth painting) of Odisha

Pattachitra is a traditional folk art of Odisha. Patta means cloth and Chitra means painting. A fine cotton cloth is coated with soft white stone powder and gum made out of tamarind seeds to give the cloth tensile strength and smooth semi absorbent surface and it is sun dried. After drying Khaddar stone is rub on the clothes several times for smoothening. The colours applied to make the paintings are made from natural colours like white, red, yellow black, green and brown. Black is prepared from Lamp black, yellow from Haritali stone, red from Hingal stone, white from crushed, boiled and filtered shells and green is made by boiling green leaves & Kaitha gum, brown is obtained from geru stone. The themes of Pattachitra paintings are primarily religious in nature, they often depict scenes from Hindu mythology, stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata. The painting depicts a Kadamba tree where a hunter is sitting on the branch pointing his arrow towards the tigress drinking water and by seeing this, the tiger tries to climb the tree to kill the hunter to save the tigress. Here the painting shows the artist's thought about the nature or mind sets of a hunter. There is a water body and the tiger will definitely come to drink water. So the hunter is waiting. In other sense the artist thought of a family affection between the tiger and tigress. Here the imagination of an artist creates  composition where  man and animal relationship, family affections are reflected.

Acc. No. - 2016.352
Local Name - BAGHA AVAM VYADHA
Community - Chitrakar
Locality - Puri, Odisha
Measurement - Height – 37.8”, Width – 30”

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Date: June 8, 2023