Earthy Warm Wall Art

Earthy Warm — 5 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Geru — also spelled geroo — is a natural iron-oxide ochre pigment (hematite) used across Indian folk traditions as both colour and wall preparation: in Mithila villages, cow-dung and geru washes once coated mud walls before ritual painting, creating the warm rust-brown ground against which lampblack and rice-paste white performed. Art historian Neel Rekha and earlier writers including Pupul Jayakar classify Geru as one of the distinct Madhubani style families that emerged when women artists moved from ephemeral wall work to paper in the 1960s–70s — characterised by strong black lines, minimal ornament, and ochre-dominant palettes, distinct from Kayastha Kachni line density and Brahmin Bharni colour fill. Saura (also Sora or Saora) is one of the oldest Adivasi communities of southern Odisha; the Lanjia Saura sub-group of the Rayagada and Gajapati hills are known for their ritual wall paintings, called ikon or idital, painted by a kuranmaran (shaman-priest) in white rice paste on the deep-maroon inner wall of a house to honour deities and ancestors. Hill and shifting cultivation — the seasonal cycle of clearing, ploughing, sowing and harvesting on sloped fields — is a long-standing Saura livelihood, and field scenes recur across Saura panels alongside ritual subjects.

Updated 22 Jun 2026