Jivya Soma Mashe is a central figure in Indian tribal art, as he was the one who turned the Warli tribal art from a predominantly ritual-centered art form to an everyday painting activity. A legacy of his introspective period (when he lost his mother at 7 and out of shock he stopped speaking for several years, communicating only by drawing pictures in the dust), his artistic abilities were first noticed nationally and later, internationally. The apex of his career was probably the inclusion in the ???Magiciens de la terre??? exhibition at the Centre Pompidou and the Grande Halle de la Villette in 1989, which brought him unprecedented recognition.