What is batik painting (commonly known as silk painting)?

Batik (from the Java language batik is painting with hot wax) is a technique that allows artist to create art on fabric using silk as the canvas. Batik – is a cumulative name of the different techniques of manual fabric painting. On the base of these diverse methods lies the reservation principle – covering fabric area with a special mixture so that it remains uncolored and forms a pattern..

Batik is a direct paint-on method. Dyes are applied to silk fabrics using a wide range of watercolor techniques. The colors merge to become an integral part of the fabric. Silk painting is not static. Movement and fluidity are the hallmark of this art form.

Historically, silk painting technique can be traced back to India in the second century A.D. and to Java 200 years later where the batik industry flourished. Silk painting was and continues to be very popular in the Far East (Japan, China, Indonesia). The history of how batik found it’s way to Europe is unclear. Silk painters from France and Hungary believe their teachers learned the craft in France from members of the Russian czar’s family.

Some recourses say that silk painting, was popularized by a French artist, Litza Bain, who brought together the techniques that first were used by French milliners and silk flower makers as well as Russian artists who emigrated to France in the early part of the century. She combined these elements and developed a system for silk painting (early 1960s). Since then, silk painting has risen in popularity due to the unique attractiveness of decorating silk.

Anyhow, since 20th century the interest for the Eastern counties and their culture brought a strong wave of the batique in all its variety among professional artists and fabric and cloth designers. Now, by the word “batik” people imply not only the wax technology of the multi step of fabric coloring, but the nodular and roving painting, Japanese multi-coloring paining on silk and others.

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