“Chitra” means painting and “Katha” means story in any form. Chitrakatha is a form of visual and oral storytelling popular in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and some parts of Andhra Pradesh, performed by the nomadic community of Chitrakathis who would travel from village to village narrating stories from epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana.
The small village of Pinguli, located near Kudal in Maharashtra has been home to the Thakar Adivasi community from the mid-eighteenth century. The art of chitrakatha was handed down informally through generations and received patronage from Raja Khemsawant Bhosale of the state of Sawantwadi. Interestingly, the nomadic nature of these artists made them useful in political espionage, and many were appointed by Shivaji Maharaja as spies since they traveled from village to village down till the Konkan coast.
The most typical features of chitrakathi paintings are the bold, powerful lines, use of flat colours bound by a uniform line. The rich depiction of human figures are in both frontal and profile views, with animals mostly depicted in profile view. The faces are stereotyped with a high forehead, large emphatic eyes, pointed nose, and prominent mouth. Boding resemblance to leather shadow puppets of Telangana that come from the same line of tradition. The paintings were done with natural pigments on handmade paper and standardized according to their audience size.
