Phad painting

also: Phad

tradition style Origins uncertain - ongoing Rajasthan India

Phad painting is a religious scroll tradition from Rajasthan, practiced for centuries around Shahpura in Bhilwara district and bound up with the region's itinerant priest-singers, the Bhopas. The Bhopa performs the epic of a folk deity - usually Pabuji or Devnarayan - before a long painted cloth scroll, the phad, which serves as a mobile temple for the deities worshipped by the Rebari community. Pabuji's phads run about fifteen feet, Devnarayan's about thirty, and the whole epic is packed onto the single surface: a dense, flattened world of heroes, battles, processions and animals, filled with traditional vegetable colors. Once the exclusive craft of the Joshi family, the style was opened to outsiders when Shree Lal Joshi founded his school in Bhilwara in 1960, and modern painters such as Pradip Mukherjee have since carried the format into other scriptures.

a part of pabuji ka phad as displayed in the National Museum, New Delhi during the exhibition of the Body in Indian Art
a part of pabuji ka phad as displayed in the National Museum, New Delhi during the exhibition of the Body in Indian ArtCC BY-SA 3.0 (credit: Nomu420) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Whole epics painted on long cloth scrolls - Pabuji's about 15 feet, Devnarayan's about 30
  • A flattened, tapestry-like space with many episodes side by side and no single viewpoint
  • Strong outlines filled with flat, saturated color, traditionally vegetable pigments
  • Hierarchical scale - the folk deity dominates a composition dense with figures, animals and incident
  • Painted to be performed: the scroll works as a backdrop for sung narrative and lamplight

Key figures

  • Shree Lal Joshi (1931-2018) — Phad master who opened the hereditary craft to outsiders with his Joshi Kala Kendra school (1960), now Chitrashala in Bhilwara

Example works

  • Pabuji Ki Phad — Traditional (undated)
  • Devnarayan Ki Phad — Traditional (undated)

Sources

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