History of painting in India or Indian painting
India is a land of great rivers. These waterflows connect the great cultural antiquity and diversity of the country with the enormity of its efforts of its present times. Duality of the physical life mixes easily with the non-duality of the spiritual visions. Likewise, India's art of painting which dates back to the early mornings of human history brings out its colors and lines and inner vibrations to carry forward the interiorized life of the country's external personality to connect with the wondrous continuity of its culture. Factuality, reality, and creativity find uninterrupted expression in hailing the joys and sorrows, hopes and frustrations of life. Both the dynamic life and transcendental meditation found expression in the natural dyes and colors of the country's ancient times.
When did India start its drawings and paintings?
Bhimbetka has the answer. It is the site of pre-historic art, some 40 kilometers south of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, central India. You will see there a deeply forested area with some 50 to 60 hillocks, where lies and answer to the above question. It was where hundreds of generations ago, pre-historic artists found expression to their mind.
These are rock paintings. It is believed that these paintings are 20,000 to 50,000 years old and this is what experts have also calculated. Residues of the ancient Brahmi scripts too have been found among the paintings. The hillocks are of sandstone. There are some caves too, like the ones in Ajanta and Ellora. And according to experts these areas were favorite havens for the pre-historic communities. Apart from the paintings on the rocks, the Bhimbetka people had left numerous rock weapons, tools, ceramics, and bones and these remain the most valuable clues for the evolution of mankind's evolution. The paintings on the rocks are in red, green and white colors in all shades and varieties, and done primarily with a finger. Some experts thought they used feathers, wooden sticks and needles of porcupines also for various styles and textures. The subjects of the paintings are birds and animals, in triangles, rectangles, circles and hexagons. You can see a deer running away from a lion, animals crying for help from the hunters, and men running away from wild boars. In certain pictures the interior of the animals' stomach also are attempted in slender suggestions.
Basically, India started its painting business from the day when the alphabetic characters received decorations. Leaf juices, fruit juices and saps of trees as well as dusts of color stones made a paste in lime or clay became the media for those artists of extremely ancient days of human artistic expressions. Came in reds, yellows, black, greens, white and their shades using saffron. For sculpting rocks, wood and metals proved the media (tools). Two dimensions developed up to four dimensions.
