Rickshaw painting of Bangladesh
three-wheeled decorated passenger vehicle pulled by one person featured in Dhaka and Bangladesh

Rickshaw painting (Bengali: রিকশাচিত্র) is a form of neo-romanticism emerging in Bangladesh. The art in question consists of oil paintings on the rear of the canvas roof of rickshaws, done by local street artists, who also paint the various landscapes, portraits and personal statements of the driver. Rickshaws and rickshaw paintings of Bangladesh are listed as 'intangible cultural heritage' by UNESCO.
History
In Bangladesh, rickshaw art dates back to the 1950s, and every conceivable part of the rickshaw is painted. In addition to geometric designs, there are depictions of flowers, birds and even popular actresses. The rickshaw can be decorated to show the driver's religious beliefs and sometimes even a commentary on current social issues. In Bangladesh, rickshaw art is looked down upon by the elite population.
The three-wheeled pedicab, more commonly known as the rickshaw, has been around since the 1940s. Initially, they were undecorated, but starting in the late 1940s, the faces of movie stars began appearing as decorative motifs on shields at the back of the rickshaws along with a variety of floral paintings. The unique trend of rickshaw art started from Rajshahi and Dhaka in Bangladesh and took its own style in each district. For instance, Chittagong, being a more pious city than Dhaka, mostly had floral or scenery art, whereas Comilla has plain rickshaws with beautiful dark blue or green hoods, on which are sewn an appliqué of a minaret or floral design enshrining the word "Allah".
“Rickshaw painting of Bangladesh” enters the record as three-wheeled decorated passenger vehicle pulled by one person featured in Dhaka and Bangladesh. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rickshaw, painting and Bangladesh can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7332003. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rickshaw painting of Bangladesh” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.