Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists
The painter who put the gods on the bazaar wall: his oleographs of Lakshmi, Saraswati, and the epics made divine images a part of every Indian home.
Tagged: Painting Modern Devotional Iconic Bazaar Art Oleograph Hindu
Ravi Varma, trained in the Travancore court and in European oil technique, founded a lithographic press in 1894 to print his paintings of the gods and heroines of the epics. The prints sold for annas, and the faces he gave the deities became, for millions, the faces of the deities.
The pictured Lakshmi oleograph of 1896 is the type: a goddess rendered like a court portrait, printed like a poster, worshipped like an icon.
References
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