Jivya Soma Mashe

Warli painting has its roots in traditions dating back to 2,500 years BCE. Married women, known as suvasani, painted with rice paste and a bamboo stick on the red mud and cow dung walls of their homes. These paintings depicted ceremonial occasions connected to the harvest and wedding seasons. Jivya Soma Mashe was the first man to take up this art in the 1970s. While preserving traditional techniques, he opted for a simple graphic vocabulary derived from his observation of nature. The underlying theme of his paintings is the relationship of the Warli people to the earth and living beings, with scenes of farming, harvesting and fishing.

The Fondation Cartier has supported the work of Jivya Soma Mashe on various occasions, notably by acquiring six of his works between 2011 and 2015, and by exhibiting them in Histoires de voir in 2012 and Mémoires Vives in 2014. In 2021, he participated in the Trees exhibition, a travelling version of Nous les Arbres organised by the Fondation Cartier in partnership with the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.