Kalamkari on cotton cloth - Lord Krishna, 30"/48", Master Artist collection

Kalamkari’(Hand–painted) art in of India developed around a place of pilgrimage Srikalahasti in Andhra Pradesh. ‘Kalam’ is pen and ‘kari’ is work. At the onset, the artisan painted Kalamkari temple cloths for the temple. The Kalamkari paintings were also commissioned as religious and decorative purposes e.g. screens and canopies in temples and for the deity chariots.

In the traditional Kalamkari of Srikalahasti, hand made vegetable colors are used. They are in deep shades of red, maroon, blue. There is a unique pattern to the use of colors. The women with expressive faces are depicted in yellow, Gods are painted in blue, Demons in red, green or left unpainted. Where reds are used in the background, it is made of a deeper shade by first applying alum to the cloth surface. The figures in red are made more subdued so that the reds do not merge. The figures that are not painted by red are bleached, by the use of alum to enable them to take on other colours like blue, yellow, green.

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