Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)

• Usually draw one creature, tree or deity as a bold cut-out silhouette suspended on an open ground, plain or of one flat colour; when the scene grows into a forest of birds and animals, as in Jangarh's Shiv Ling Ganesh, keep every figure a flat, patterned silhouette, and let lines radiating from a figure's edge carry its power or movement instead of a perspective landscape.
• Lay each part of the figure in its own flat, bright colour, then cover it with a rhythmic fill of dots, dashes, comb-lines, cross-hatching, rows of ovals or squiggles drawn with the pen (kalam), until the surface seems to vibrate; put the density inside the outline, not across the ground.
• Give the fill a signature: every Gond painter develops a pattern unique to him or her, so invent your own repeat rather than copying a named painter's.
• Keep the picture flat and frontal, with no shading, perspective or cast shadow, and let animals, people and insects merge with and grow out of trees rather than stand in a landscape.
• For print, reduce a commissioned, credited painter's work to a few flat inks the painter approves and screenprint them on handmade or black paper, as Tara Books did, and keep any text off the patterned figure.

Patangarh village (then Mandla district, now Dindori district), Madhya Pradesh, and Bhopal. The Pardhans, a Gond sub-group, were the community's bards, who sang its folk tales and epics to the three-stringed bana; Pardhan Gond women painted the walls and floors of their houses (bhitti chitra, including the geometric digna patterns) in mud, rice, turmeric, geru and charcoal. In October 1981 scouts from Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, approached the young Jangarh Singh Shyam (born 1960 or 1962, died 2001), whose house walls were covered with his paintings; Jagdish Swaminathan, founding director of its Roopankar museum, persuaded him to work in Bhopal, and his first sample paintings were shown at Bharat Bhavan's inaugural exhibition in February 1982. He trained relatives and villagers, who taught others, and the critic Udayan Vajpeyi, in his essay 'From Music to Painting', proposed that the new school be called Jangarh Kalam. From the 2000s Tara Books, Chennai (founded by Gita Wolf in 1994), published Gond painters' picture books, some screenprinted by hand.

1. Wikipedia, 'Jangarh Singh Shyam' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jangarh_Singh_Shyam)
2. Wikipedia, 'Bhajju Shyam' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhajju_Shyam)
3. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Shiv Ling Ganesh, 1995, M.2013.56.1 (https://collections.lacma.org/object/184060)
4. Sarmaya, Mumbai, Jangarh Singh Shyam, Untitled, ink on paper, 1999, 2015.2.97 (https://sarmaya.in/objects/indigenous-tribal-art/untitled-17/)
5. Saffronart, Living Traditions: Folk & Tribal Art, 16–17 March 2016, lot 64: Jangarh Singh Shyam, acrylic on canvas, 1997, 'Signed in Devnagari and dated', with a lot essay on his silhouettes, dots and hatched lines (https://www.saffronart.com/auctions/postwork.aspx?l=20992)
6. Anne Pinto-Rodrigues, 'The visual storyteller of Patangarh', People's Archive of Rural India, 17 October 2019, on the Pardhan bards and the bana, Jangarh Kalam and the infill of dots, dashes and small curves (https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/the-visual-storyteller-of-patangarh/)
7. Kamayani Sharma, 'Durgabai Vyam interview: The Adivasi painter on how Gond art is responding to contemporary times', Scroll.in, 4 April 2023, on digna, The Night Life of Trees and Bhimayana (https://scroll.in/magazine/1046722/scroll_in)
8. Wikipedia, 'Bhimayana' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhimayana)
9. Tara Books, About (https://tarabooks.com/about/)
10. Tara Books, 'The Night Life of Trees' (https://tarabooks.com/shop/the-night-life-of-trees/)
11. Tara Books, 'The London Jungle Book' (https://tarabooks.com/shop/the-london-jungle-book/)
12. Tara Books, 'Signature' (https://tarabooks.com/shop/signature/), and Sumati, review of Signature: Patterns in Gond Art, The Caravan, 1 August 2010 (https://caravanmagazine.in/bookshelf/signature-patterns-gond-art)
13. Publishers Weekly, review of The Night Life of Trees, 2006: 'Hand screened onto black paper' (https://www.publishersweekly.com/9788186211922)
14. Ek Type, Mukta font family (https://github.com/EkType/Mukta)
15. Priti David, 'Gond art: stories of the forest and the land', People's Archive of Rural India, 7 April 2024, on the April 2023 GI, its two Dindori registrants, the objections of Jangarh's family and the Jangarh Samvardhan Samiti, and the district collector's reply (https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/gond-art-stories-of-the-forest-and-the-land/)
16. Drishti IAS, Madhya Pradesh current affairs, 8 April 2023, listing 'Gond Painting of Dindori' among six Madhya Pradesh products granted GI tags, announced 6 April 2023 (https://www.drishtiias.com/statepcs/08-04-2023/madhya-pradesh), and Free Press Journal, 'Madhya Pradesh's Gond painting gets GI tag', 11 April 2023 (https://www.freepressjournal.in/bhopal/madhya-pradeshs-gond-painting-gets-gi-tag)
17. Saffronart, Living Traditions: Folk and Tribal Art, 19–20 April 2017, lot 25: Jangarh Singh Shyam (1960–2001), Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 1997, citing Udayan Vajpeyi's essay 'From Music to Painting' (in Sathyapal, ed., Native Art of India, 2011) as proposing the name Jangarh Kalam (https://www.saffronart.com/auctions/postwork.aspx?l=23810)

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