Lado Bai

Lado Bai, a renowned Bhil painter, was born in Madhya Pradesh in 1964. She is known for her contemporary experiments within Bhil art. She grew up watching her community deeply engaged in mural paintings, which inspired her to start painting at the age of 12. After moving to Bharat Bhavan to work as a labourer, she painted on the walls and floors of her temporary home in the evenings.The director of Bharat Bhavan Jagdish Swaminathan was impressed by her paintings, and encouraged her practice. Under his guidance, she transitioned from mural painting to canvases, and has developed a distinctive visual style in a career over forty years.

She was awarded the Lok Rang Fellowship Award by the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust in 1996, Master Ojas Award in 2017, Tulsidas Samaan in 2018, and Shikhar Samman in 2019. Lado Bai draws inspiration from Bhil legends, stories, and traditional Pithora paintings. Her colourful dotted patterns of humans, animals and inanimate figures reflect Bhil community’s animist beliefs. Later, she modified them into wave-like forms, lending a unique rhythm. Some of her recent works foreground humans, commenting on their conflicting relationship with nature.

Many of Lado Bai’s paintings were transferred from the mud walls of her home to canvas for the Roopanker Museum in Bharat Bhavan. Her works are in esteemed collections worldwide, including Bharat Bhavan, Museum of Sacred Heart in Belgium, KADIST Collection and Philadelphia Museum of Art in the USA. Her works have been exhibited widely in India, France and the United Kingdom. She has collaborated with Bhuri Bai on several paintings, which was later published in Jagdish Swaminathan’s Perceiving Fingers (1987). Lado Bai lives in Bhopal and works for the Adivasi Lok Kala Academy.