News Reader.info

Pichvais today may be a pale shadow of what they once were but efforts are on to ensure that the art form gets back its traditional glory. Gargi Gupta visits a Delhi exhibition to see how

Sri Nathji dressed in fine jewellery as the central character in traditional Pichvai paintings _Pichvais_, like most indigenous Indian art, have had a revival of sorts in recent times. What

were originally intended to be painted backdrops to the Krishna deity at the Sri Nathji temple in Udaipur have found renewed favour as decorative objects, bought for their bright, earthy

colours and hung in drawing rooms just as you would any modern or contemporary painting. Sadly, the _pichvais _you get in Nathdwara today are a pale shadow of the rich, intricate art that it

originally was. "They use spray guns and pigments these days and do a painting a day. The new generation of the traditional painter families don't want to take it up," says

Pooja Singhal, a Delhi-based aficionado who has been collecting _pichvais _and trying to revive the traditional methods of making them, using colours made of stone or animal or plant

extracts. The colour yellow, for instance, says Singhal came from the urine of cows that had been fed mangoes. Eighty of these _pichvais_, which Singhal has got painters in Nathdwara to make

using old methods and in old designs culled from catalogues and private collections, are on show/sale at Delhi currently. The exhibition affords a wonderful snapshot of the complex

iconography of _pichvais_. While the deity of Sri Nathji, the manifestation of Krishna as a seven-year-old child, is the central figure in all the paintings, the painters allude to many

legends on his life, his many shringaras (costumes), and seasonal, or daily rituals at Sri Nathji through small variations in the symbolic conventions of colour, dress and gesture. So if

it's summer, he's dressed in white Muslin dhoti, kurta and garland of lotus buds; and if it's a rich brocade dress, sash and jacket then it's Sri Nathji in autumn. On

some days, he's dressed in short lower garments, akin to a _langot_, worn by wrestlers – after Tilakayat Govardhanlal, a descendant of Sri Nathji sect-founder Vallabhcharya, who was a

wrestler. On others, he wears a _suthana _(pyjamas) and _patka _(waistband) – Mughal wear gifted to him by Taj Begum, a consort of Mughal emperor Akbar who was a devotee.