craft baba

Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal

Kalighat Paintings refer to the class of paintings and drawings on hand-made paper produced by a group of artists called Patuas in the neighbourhood of the famous Kali temple at Kalighat in between 19thand earlier 20thCentury.

By the early 19thcentury the Kalighat Temple was a popular destination for local people, pilgrims and certain foreign visitors as well. With the rise of popularity and fame of the goddess Kali, many of the artisans and craftsmen flocked to Kalighat area to capitalise the new market by selling cheap religious souvenirs to the visitors. Soon after that a number of skilledartistsmoved to Kolkata from the rural Bengal especially from 24 Paraganas and Midnapore and set up stalls outside the Temple. In the villages they had painted long narrative stories on scrolls of handmade paper often stretched to over 20 feet in length and were known aspatachitra. Each section was known as apatand the artists therefore became known aspatuas. Thepatuaswould travel from village to village, unrolling the scroll a section at a time and singing the stories to their audiences. However, the visitors to Kalighat did not want to buy long scrolls which would take a lot of time to paint. Thepatuastherefore started painting single pictures involving just one or two figures that could be painted quickly with simple forms leaving the background plain and eliminating non- essential details.