Warli Wall Art

The Warlis or Varlis are an indigenous tribe or Adivasis living in the mountainous as well as the coastal regions of the Maharashtra-Gujarat border.

Warli paintings are a very rudimentary style of painting using basic geometric forms of circles, triangles and squares to adorn walls and floors. The circles and triangles come from their observation of nature, the circle representing the sun and the moon, and the triangle the trees and the mountains.

Warli paintings are traditionally done with locally available ‘Geru’ (a red mud) and figures worked with a rice paste. The walls are coated with cowdung, mud and then with ‘Geru’. Reed like sticks from the ‘Baharu’ tree was used as pens.