A History of Indian Painting The Mural Tradition

A History of Indian Painting The Mural Tradition

by Krishna Chaitanya

0 Halftone Illustrations Jacket in four colours

Indian painting is one of the greatest cultural traditions of the world. Ajanta, the earliest efflorescence, was also a magnificent one, with a parabolic curve of growth and decay that spanned a whole millennium. Impulses from Ajanta radiated afar, to the sea-girt islands in the south and east and to the heartlands of the continent. In subsequent phases, in the emergence of miniature painting for example, India received gifts as generous as those she gave.

Art, like the play of the child and the play of God which creates the world, is a welling up of delight and a narration about it should also share and communicate that delight. But due to various historical reasons, art has been long mixed up with archaeology in India and the layman finds most of the research tomes forbidding. On the other hand, narrations modelled on the idiom of tourist literature insult his intelligence. And in any case, there is no complete, connected narrative of the history of Indian painting available.

This book is an attempt to close the sorry gap. Instead of weighing down the narration, all relevant research data have been melted into its flow, the major images reflected in it being always the great visions of beauty in the tradition.

The present volume covers the mural tradition. The next volume will deal with manuscript, Moghul and Deccani painting.

About The Author:-

Krishna Chaitanya (b. 1918) graduated from the Madras University standing first both in B.A. and M.A. A well-known writer, his major projects have been a history of world literature, of which nine volumes have already appeared in English and several Indian languages; a series of books retelling Indian classics for children; and a fivevolume philosophy of freedom, integrating science and humanities, of which two volumes have already appeared.

A distinguished art critic, Krishna Ghaitanya is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, Paris; Vice-President of the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi; Editor of Roopa-Lekka, India’s oldest extant art journal; author of several monographs on contemporary Indian painters. His interdisciplinary studies earned for him a special award from the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and an invitation from the Institute of International Education, New York, for a lecture-tour of the USA and Japan for six months as a “Critic of Ideas”. He has visited art galleries in several countries of Europe, and has organized Indian art exhibitions, on behalf of the Government of India, in Afghanistan and China.