These Five South Indian Studios Are Keeping Centuries-Old Art Forms From Disappearing

South India has some of the oldest continuous art traditions in the world. The mural paintings at Ajanta date to the 2nd century BCE. The Kalamkari tradition at Srikalahasti traces its origins to the Satavahana dynasty, around 3000 years ago. Tanjore painting reached its peak under Maratha rule in the 17th century. Mysore painting evolved from the Vijayanagara Empire in the 15th century. These are not historical footnotes. They are living practices, kept alive by a small number of studios, institutions, and families who have chosen to do the harder work of rebuilding from source rather than replicating for the market. While we are certain there are many practitioners doing important work across the region, we bring you the ones doing it with the most rigour, the deepest historical grounding, and the clearest commitment to the craft itself.

Tanjore painting, known in Tamil as Palagai Padam, meaning picture on a wooden plank, is a classical South Indian art form originating in the town of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu around 1600 CE. It flourished first under the Nayakas of Thanjavur and reached its peak during the Maratha rule of 1676 to 1855. The paintings are devotional works depicting Hindu gods, goddesses, and scenes from the Puranas, characterised by rich, vivid colours, intricate gesso work in low relief, and 22-carat gold foil applied over the raised surfaces. The tradition nearly collapsed with the end of royal patronage in the 19th century. Sankalp Arts and Crafts, based in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, is among the most rigorous studio operations currently preserving the tradition. Founded over 80 years ago by the current proprietor's family, the studio has produced over 300 original Tanjore paintings across its lineage. Each work is executed on a wooden base, prepared with a paste of limestone powder and Arabic gum for the gesso work, then layered with natural mineral colours and finished with 22-carat or 24-carat gold foil. Glass beads, pearls, or semi-precious stones are inlaid to highlight jewellery and architectural details within the composition. The studio also offers training through masterclasses and accepts commissions for custom work. Tanjore painting received a Geographical Indication tag in 2007 to 2008.

Mysore painting traces its origins to the Ajanta cave paintings of the 2nd century BCE, but the distinct school as it exists today evolved from the Vijayanagara tradition during the reign of the Vijayanagara kings between 1336 and 1565 CE. When the Vijayanagara Empire fell in 1565 CE following the Battle of Talikota, the families of painters called Chitrakaras dispersed to various feudatory states. Raja Wodeyar I, who ruled Mysore from 1578 to 1617 CE, rehabilitated several of these families at Srirangapatna, and the Wodeyar dynasty's ongoing patronage gave the tradition its distinct character: elegant, muted in palette, and characterised by delicate gesso work in low relief overlaid with 24-carat gold foil, distinctly less ornate than the Tanjore school. The art form's most significant patron was Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, who reigned from 1799 to 1868 and extended patronage across music, painting, sculpture, and literature, commissioning encyclopaedic illustrated works and preserving the Mysore tradition's visual vocabulary. The form saw a 20th century decline with the abolition of princely states in 1947 and the collapse of royal patronage. Divine Mysore Arts, operated by artist Raghavendra B.B. in Mysuru, is currently one of the most active studios practising the traditional form, producing works in classical idiom while also training students. The Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, established in Bengaluru in 1960, remains the most significant institutional platform for Mysore painting exhibitions and workshops. Mysore painting received a Geographical Indication tag from the Government of India.

Kerala mural painting is a tradition rooted in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, depicting scenes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata Purana on the lime-plastered interior walls of temples and palaces using a palette of five natural colours: yellow, red, green, black, and white, derived entirely from plant and mineral sources. The finest surviving examples include the Mattancherry Palace panels in Kochi, depicting the Ramayana in continuous narrative form, and the murals at the Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple in Thrissur. A fire at the Guruvayur temple in 1970 damaged the Sreekovil, the sanctum sanctorum, destroying three walls of paintings. When the authorities sought artists to repaint them, they found that qualified practitioners had almost entirely disappeared. Four veteran mural painters, Mammiyur Krishnankutty Nair, Pattambi Krishna Varier, M.K. Sreenivasan, and K.K. Varier, completed the restoration. The experience led directly to the founding of the Guruvayur Devaswom Institute of Mural Painting in 1989, situated at East Nada within the temple complex. The institute operates on the traditional gurukula pattern: students are hand-picked for aptitude, receive room and board and a monthly stipend, bathe at dawn in the temple tank, and participate in morning puja before beginning their training. The five-year National Diploma Course covers two years of Fine Arts fundamentals followed by three years of intensive specialisation in traditional Kerala mural painting. Mammiyur Krishnankutty Nair served as the institute's first principal. The current principal and chief instructor is K.U. Krishnakumar. The institute participates in national-level exhibitions and accepts commissioned work under the Guruvayur Devaswom's regulations.

DWARAKA, which stands for Development of Weavers and Rural Artisans, is a social enterprise established in 1998 in Srikalahasti, Andhra Pradesh, under the guidance of the DRRT Ramanarpanam Trust, founded by philanthropist V. Dwaraknath Reddy. Its founding mandate was the revival of the hand-painted Kalamkari textiles that had historically thrived along the banks of the Swarnamukhi River. In 2009, DWARAKA Plus, the Peoples Livelihoods Upliftment Society, emerged as a dedicated platform exclusively managed by its own artists, with a focus on empowering rural women from marginalised communities to train in and practice authentic hand-painted Kalamkari art. Working under the guidance of master artists from the local Kalamkari community, women from villages including VM Palli in Srikalahasti have trained in and now practice the complete 17 to 25-step process using only natural dyes. The organisation emphasises sustainability and preserves the art form's authenticity by refusing synthetic pigments. DWARAKA's work is distinct from the broader studio ecosystem in that it is artist-managed, community-rooted, and focused specifically on the economic and creative rehabilitation of women artisans in one of the most endangered traditional craft communities in India.

DakshinaChitra (the name means "a picture of the south") does not specialise in a single art form or a single state. Founded in 1996 by Dr. Deborah Thiagarajan as a project of the Madras Craft Foundation—a non-governmental organisation she established in 1984 after years of visiting rural villages in Tamil Nadu and Kerala—it was built around a single and then-unusual conviction: that the only way to preserve traditional South Indian architecture, craft, and performing arts was to place the actual objects and structures, not reproductions, in a setting where they could be experienced rather than archived. The result is a living-history museum on 10 acres of land at Muttukadu on the East Coast Road, 25 kilometres south of Chennai, overlooking the Bay of Bengal. Eighteen heritage houses from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh—all of them slated for demolition—were dismantled, transported, and reconstructed brick by brick by artisans, known as Stapathis, from the regions they came from. Each house is furnished to reflect the community and period it represents, from a Syrian Christian home from Kerala to a silk weaver's house from Kanchipuram. The collection across the site holds 4,220 artefacts as of 2014, including 3,200 objects, 950 textiles, and 70 contemporary works. The library runs to over 14,000 books and journals on South Indian arts, crafts, anthropology, and folklore, alongside more than one lakh photographs, and the National Folklore Support Centre's collections. The craft bazaar and workshop programme brings artisans from villages across the south to demonstrate, teach, and sell their work directly to visitors—a structure that keeps the economic connection between craft and maker intact rather than routing it through intermediaries. The museum is closed on Tuesdays.