Gond is a form of folk painting and tribal art practised by the eponymous community. The Gondi people mainly stay in Madhya Pradesh and some parts of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Maharashtra. The art originated more than 14,000 years ago.

Indian craft is often emblematic of the lives, realities and surroundings of the artisans behind them. Gond art is one of the most prominent examples, with artists painting everything from butterflies, elephants, lions, birds and fish to local deities, and Hindu gods and goddesses.

Gond art is distinctive because the artists use dots and dashes, and use naturally extracted vivid colors like orange, blue, yellow, and red. Clearly, nature is deeply connected to the art. The word ‘Gond’ comes from the Dravidian ‘kond,’ referring to green mountains.

The Pardhans, a part of the Gondi community, are famed as gifted storytellers. Since the '80s, many of them moved their wall art to painting on canvas.

Gond art shares kinship with the indigenous aboriginal art of Australia. Both depict stories of the creation of the universe and use the same motifs, dashes and dots. This showcases the odd-evenness of the art-craft universe, and its commonalities as well as contrasts across the world.

Jangarh Singh Shyam of Madhya Pradesh is believed to be repsponsible for the modern renaissance of Gond art in the 20th Century is. A Pardhan artist, Shyam modernised how his community's myths were memorialized. He later adopted poster colours and new print-making techniques influenced by artists at Bharat Bhavan, a multidisciplinary art centre set up in the state in the ’80s.

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