Painting
The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of pre-historic times, the petroglyphs as found in places like Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, and some of them are older than 5500 BC. Such works continued and after several millennia, in the 7th century, carved pillars of Ellora, Maharashtra state present a fine example of Indian paintings, and the colors, mostly various shades of red and orange, were derived from minerals. Thereafter, frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora caves appeared. India's Buddhist literature is replete with examples of texts which describe that palaces of kings and aristocratic class were embellished with paintings, but they have not survived. But, it is believed that some form of art painting was practiced in that time.
Indian Art was given a new lease of life by the British in early 19th century when the new government required painters to document Indian life and times. The English School paintings, as these new art were called had seen the emergence of India's greatest artists of all times Raja Ravi Verma. Other important artists of the Colonial period include Jamini Roy, Amrita Shergil, Ramkinker Baij and Rabindranath Tagore. After independence, Indian art became more diverse and artists like Maqbool Fida Hussain, Francis Newton Souza, Subodh Gupta, Devajyoti Ray, Paresh Maity and Bose Krishnamachari earned international recognition.
- Indian art, ancient and medieval
Read more about this topic: Arts And Entertainment In India
Famous quotes containing the word painting:
“If men at forty will be painting lakes
The ephemeral blues must merge for them in one,
The basic slate, the universal hue.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)