Researcher and conservationist Geetha Bhat’s book “Deevara Chittara: The Artform, the People, Their Culture” is a visual record of life, lineage, and rituals related to the Chittara art.
Published Sep 07, 2025 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 07, 2025 | 8:00 AM
Chittara artist Gademane Padmavathy at work.
Synopsis: Deevara Chittara is a traditional artform practised by the women of the Deevaru community. There is a Chittara for most of the occasions. Having passed down from one generation of women to another in the matri-centric society, it is an integral part of their collective memory and identity.
A lattice of triangles, squares, diamonds, and chevrons, all arranged with mathematical precision but with bare hands and alive with symbolic meaning. That’s Deevara Chittara for you, a traditional art form practised by the women of the Deevaru community in the Malnad region of Karnataka.
Be it birth, marriage, festivals, or rituals, the Deevaru women have, for generations, celebrated life not just through song and dance but also through the distinctive visual language of Chittara art. Created with natural dyes, it adorns mud walls, doorways, baskets, and even their body parts as tattoos.
While the red is drawn from red earth, white is extracted from rice or white clay, yellow comes from a seasonal fruit, and black is prepared from rice roasted on a slow fire.
Having passed down from one generation of women to another in the matri-centric society, it is an integral part of their collective memory and identity. Geetha Bhat, who has been researching the art form for years, has now come out with a 200-page coffee table book, Deevara Chittara: The Artform, the People, Their Culture (published by Prism Books), to document and showcase this art to the world.
The coffee table book on Chittara.
Bhat, documentary photographer Smitha Tumuluru, and textile designer Namrata Cavale undertook two years of fieldwork to create this book. They visited the villages of Sagara, which has the famed Jog Falls, Sirsi, Soraba, and Shivamogga.
Bhat first saw Chittara at a Karnataka Chithrakala Parishath, an art complex housing galleries and the College of Fine Arts, in Bengaluru. It piqued her interest, and she began researching it.
“They (Deevaru community) are nature worshippers, also water worshippers. And most of their symbols have been taken from nature and their surroundings. I started frequenting the villages and meeting elderly ladies. I found their experiences and passion for Chittara fascinating. Women would return from the fields, finish their work, and make Chittara. But it was kind of a dying art form, and that’s when I realised the need for it to be documented, archived and taken forward,” says Bhat, who founded the Center for Revival of Indigenous Art (CFRIA), a non-profit organisation to preserve and promote Chittara, in 2008.M
The authors of the book.
CFRIA also organises lec-dems, workshops at various educational, cultural institutions, and exhibitions.
There is a Chittara, if not for all, for most of the occasions. No marriage is possible without Hasegode Chittara. “All the rituals start and end there, so it has to be there. In the old days, marriages used to happen in their houses, so it was done on their houses’ walls. Then there is another important Chittara for them called Terina Chittara. The community has an annual festival where all the village people come to the temple and pull the chariot. The Chittara depicts that,” explains Bhat.
The book contains these and many more Chittaras like Tiruge Mane Chowkada Chittara, Tulasi Gidada Chittara, etc.
“Tiruge Mane Chittara is inspired by a very beautifully carved wooden stool, which is given at the time of the marriage to the girl. The patterns of the Chittara are inspired by wooden carvings of the stool,” explains the researcher.
Coming to patterns and motifs, Nili kocchu, a criss-cross design, which represents bamboo-strip walls, is integral to Chittara, whereas motifs like ele or thread, poppali, a checkerboard pattern, chendu hoovu, malli hoovu (floral motifs), patanga (butterfly), or those inspired by fish, appear in different chittaras.
According to Bhat, the training to draw and sketch chittaras begins right from the mother’s womb, “I feel every cell in their body has art. The children see their grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and sisters making chittaras right from their childhood. I would say when the child is in the womb, you know, it starts from there.”
The extensive research, particularly the field trips, was dotted with interesting interactions. Recalling an anecdote, Bhatt says, “Once I saw a very senior lady doing the embroidery, sitting in her outer part of the house, and she explained to me what she was doing. I asked her, Why are you not doing this? And she said in a very authoritative voice, ‘Just go take a walk in the garden and come back. ’ When I returned, she asked, ‘Did you see this flower in the garden?’. That woke me up. So what they see in nature, they do it.”
So many of these Ajjis (grandmothers in Kannada) and their memories of Chittara have made it to the book. “We ate with them, lived with them, and interviewed so many of them. We included all the artists’ names, their photos in our book.”
The intention is to reach out to international museums, folk art departments in India and abroad, and raise awareness about this art practice. Interestingly, the younger generation wants to take up Chittara as a profession, but it’s not financially viable.
“It used to be a thing of joy, but this generation wants to take it beyond their homes, but there’s such little awareness about it, so they are not sure about the avenues they will find to showcase it commercially. This is where the book will help.”
The fact that Chittara is done on baskets (Bhoomanni Butti), cloths (Vastra Chittara), and stools (Tiruge mane Chowkada Chittara) makes it all the more relevant for the contemporary audience.
To give visibility to the art form, Bhatt has a Chittara painted in Bosch’s office lobby in Bengaluru. She collaborated with Cavale to paint the walls of ‘Malgudi Mylari Mane’, a Karnataka food restaurant in Koramangala, with Chittara art.
Some lovely Chittara mural also adorns the walls of the Indian Music Experience Museum in Bengaluru, and a premier cultural institutions like Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in Delhi.
“The world needs to see how much can be said through just lines…Chittara has immense potential,” says Bhat.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
