Village Paintings encompass within themselves not just colors and subjects, but also an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, nostalgia for a way of life, which is (or in most cases has already) fast disappearing. Colorful images of costumed men and women planting, hoeing, harvesting, watering their crops or perhaps heading to the market, projects a somewhat idyllic illusion of a village life, and yet they manage to make us yearn for something which is/was probably never there.
Village Painting is not a very easy genre to pin down. After all it's a subject which almost every culture and civilization has dealt with –whether its the ode on a Grecian urn that Keats so poignantly talks about in his poetry or the rustic Warli paintings of Maharastrian tribal societies, Village paintings have had varied and far flung practitioners.
Warli Paintings
Warli Paintings are delightful celebrations of village life. The Warlis are primarily an agriculture dependant tribe. Historians say that the Warli tradition can be traced to the Neolithic period between 2,500 BC and 3,000 BC. During the harvest season, and weddings and births, their houses are adorned with a vocabulary of patterns; this custom gave rise to what we now know as the Warli Painting.
Trees, birds, men and women collaborate to create a composite whole in Tribal Paintings, and the paintings of the Warli tribe of Maharashtra (India) are the most joyous celebration of that very philosophy. The women of the community use their intuitive aesthetics to produce these wonderful object d arts.
The whims and moods of tribal life make for interesting themes, which is why Warli Paintings are much more than designs on wall, they are authentic depictions of a way of life.
Oaxaca Paintings
These delightfully colorful paintings depict village life in the Mexican countryside. These Paintings manage to make the markets of the Mexican village come alive for its viewers. You can almost hear the hawkers bellowing and smell a waft of freshly baked tortilla.
Village Paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder
This Flemish painter was renowned for his landscapes and Village Paintings. Bruegel specialized in landscapes populated by peasants, painted in a simpler style than the complex and ornate Italian style that prevailed at the time. Infact so adept was he in his depictions that he earned the nickname 'Peasant Brueghel'. He was considered a landmark painter not only because of his ability to paint pretty pictures but also because he tried to experiment with the genre. His village paintings were authentic study of village life- which meant that it didn't have only happy peasants going about happily with their way of life, there were sordid depiction of drunken brawls and marketsplace squabbles which are common occurances in villages.
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