Under the Banyan Tree, Onto the Canvas: The Battala Woodcut Print as a Visual Source in Contemporary Indian Art, 1970–2026

Sudipto Mandal

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i04.83371

Under the Banyan Tree, Onto the Canvas: The Battala Woodcut Print as a Visual Source in Contemporary Indian Art, 1970–2026

Author(s)	Mr. Sudipto Mandal
Country	India
Abstract	The present research aims at studying the reappearance of the cultural and visual heritage of the Battala woodcuts of the 19th century, which was the centre of woodcut printing located in northern Calcutta during the 18th and 19th centuries, as an influential factor on the visual practice of Indian artists who created their artworks between 1970 and 2026. The inexpensive, hand-coloured Battala woodprints coexisted with the chapbooks and almanacks in the same economic environment and formed a competitive relationship with the Kalighat pat paintings, as they interchanged motifs within this highly competitive environment. Although not many of contemporary painters refer explicitly to the Battala woodcuts, the paper argues that the grammar of this art form, including the graphic black contour line, the flat picture plane, the caricature of urban dwellers and the devotional icon as the reproducible motif, remains as an underlying layer within the visual culture of the Bengal tradition and other subsequent figurative art forms practiced in other Indian regions. By means of the art-historical approach based on the print history research, the visual study and the review of secondary sources, the visual layer is studied in the paper by tracing it from the collage paintings of the 1970s by Bhupen Khakhar, the drawings of Jogen Chowdhury inspired by Kalighat, the reference to bazaar oleographs used in shutter paintings by Atul Dodiya, up to the recent revival of patua traditions practised by Kalam Patua and Anwar Chitrakar. The renewed interest in Battala is evident in its appearance in exhibitions and in archival practice at Akar Prakar in the 2020s.
Keywords	Battala woodcuts, contemporary Indian art, popular print culture
Field	Arts > Drawing
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 4, July-August 2026
Published On	2026-07-09
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i04.83371

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Under the Banyan Tree, Onto the Canvas: The Battala Woodcut Print as a Visual Source in Contemporary Indian Art, 1970–2026

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