A rare collection of folk arts of Bengal and other Eastern Indian states: Bahadur Chitrakar, the artist behind this effort in the remote village of Nayagram, East Midnapore District, West Bengal, India.

Bahadur Chitrakar
When Bahadur Chitrakar was a 18 year old boy, a man named Thomas Kaiser from Germany came to Nayagram, a village in West Bengal, for the purpose of collecting old folk paintings from the eastern states of India. Young Bahadur accompanied that gentleman to different corners of the districts of Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia, Nadia, and even the states of Jharkhand and Odissa. He collected substantial old paintings, scriptures, and other articles from India and took them back to Germany.
Bahadur, being a young passionate lover of Indian folk art, suddenly changed his mind. He thought, if our old traditional folk articles were being taken away, our next generations might not see these indigenous folk art, anymore. With this notion, he started his solo venture to revisit all these areas to collect antique folk articles and ‘pattachitras’ to develop his own museum in his own village of Nayagram. “Over the last 17 years I have collected some 2000 old pattachitras, ancient scriptures, different other folk arts, masks, traditional musical instruments, books, currencies, and garments”, He says. “Such priceless collections now need proper care and preservation, and needs spontaneous help from the state government, or any enterprising organisation,” says Bahadur Chitrakar at his age of 48.
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[www.biblio.com/book/painted-songs-continuity-change-india...]

Nayagram is a small village in Pingla, Paschim Midnapur, West Bengal, India, where a number of families having a traditional form of inherited folk art called 'Pattachitra', reside together. They use mostly organic colours and paint a series of paintings, usually depicting stories from Indian Mythology. Pattachitra is a general term for traditional, cloth-based scroll painting, based in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. In the Sanskrit language, "Patta" literally means "cloth" and "Chitra" means "picture". They paint on a variety of articles like sarees, stoles, and many other materials especially for wall hangings.
I was impressed by the fact that almost all the female member of the families are involved in this traditional art and have taken it as the major source of family income.
For the last few years, State Government is promoting a number of handicraft fairs inviting artists from all over the states. Many products are sold directly from the village round the year, and are widely acclaimed in the country and abroad for its ethnic value and simplicity.

There is a resource centre belonging to 'chitrataru' cluster formed by the Pattachitra artists of Pingla, Paschim Medinipur. This was built with the support of the European union, as part of the project 'Ethno-magic Going Global' undertaken by banglanatak dot com.

Taken on: January 31, 2021

Tags:

Bahadur Chitrakar

Nayagram

Pattachitra

Purba Medinipur

Folk art of Purba Medinipur

Art of Nayagram

Scroll painting of Bengal

West Bengal Tourism

Indian Tourism

Chitrakar clan of Purba Medinipur

East Midnapur

Ethnic Bengal « less

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