Context (Production / use)
From Art Fund application:
'Pithora wall paintings are perhaps the best known art form of the Rathwa Bhils. Painted on the central wall of Rathwa homes by specialist artists known as lekhars ('writers') and consecrated by rituals performed by badwa (shaman), these paintings depict the world known as radjavi - the social world - or more properly the social [sentence left unfinished]
In painting Pithoro on the central walls of their houses, Rathwas practice the very writing of ethnography. Pithoro paintings, sociologically and economically, represent the changes in material culture. The painted central wall marks affluence and creates efficacy and order. The painting within the house interconnects places to space, reproduction with production, divinities to humans, and power autho- rities to political economy. Pithoro, as a cultural product, involves painting (dorvu) as well as writing (lakhvu), and on being completed, the composition is ritually installed in a ceremony known as Panghu, that itself generates both reading (vachvu) and interpretation. However, the maker of the painting and the interpreter of the painting are separated as two distinct acts and agencies by the Rathwas. Once a painting is completed, the ritual of Panghu makes it possible for the "voice" of the painting to be heard and deciphered by a Badvo (a ritual specialist).'
Event Date 21/12/2016
Author: Remke Velden

Context (Field collection)
Collected by Dr Mark Elliot, Senior Curator for Anthropology (Asia, Africa and Europe) at MAA, on 15 April 2016. Purchased by the collector with a grant from the Art Fund. For sale by the artist through the Adivasi Kala Kasab (Adivasi Art Store), Vaacha: museum of voice, Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, Chotaudepur, 391156, Gujarat.

Event Date 21/12/2016
Author: Remke Velden

Description (Physical description)
Painting on canvas by Mansingh Rathwa of various animals and human figures titled 'Pithoro', 2016.
Event Date 21/12/2016
Author: Remke Velden

Description (Display)
'Another India: Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia' 07/03/2017 - 22/04/2018 MAA exhibition label text reads:

Pithora: writing on the wall

Pithora paintings are perhaps the best-known Rathwa art form. The name comes from Baba Pithora, the god always riding a horse, alongside a host of characters from Rathwa and Hindu traditions and comic, even cheeky scenes. Now often painted on canvas for sale to tourists, they were traditionally painted in specific ritual contexts on the inside wall of a Rathwa house. A specialist lekhar (‘writer’) does the painting, and only when it is finished does the badwa (shaman) ‘read’ it and tell those gathered around what it represents. The writing by the painter and the reading by the shaman then come together and the ‘voice’ of the painting - the history and cosmology of the Rathwa people - is heard.

Mansingh Rathwa (lekhar), 2016
Rathwa. Tejgadh, Chhota Udaipur, Gujarat
Purchased with Art Fund support
2016.212
Event Date 22/3/2017
Author: remke Velden

Exhibition (Li Ka Shing Gallery)
EXH.2017.2 | Another India: Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia
Event Date 8/3/2017
Author: Remke Velden