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Martial Arts Paintings Gallery |
Bruce Lee
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Bruce Lee
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Karate Practice
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Enter Gallery
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Gallery Description
Martial arts has been around for quite sometime. With each fight or conflict for food, shelter and necessities came new tactics, weapons and skills of defense. Every nation has contributed to the development of martial arts through their armies and the methods of defense used by these armies.
But it was the Shao-lin monks who modified martial arts with a purpose of making it more non-aggressive, competitive and stressing on physical fitness. It is believed that these martial art movements were introduced to the Shao-lin monks during the 600AD by a visiting monk from India, called Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma found that the monks were very weak since their time was spent in meditation and prayer. He thought that some basic martial art movements and exercise was needed for self-defense and for the development of mind, spirit and body.
This form of martial art was called the Ch’uan-fa which meant, Chinese Boxing, First Law or the way of the fist. The monks who were well versed in this form of martial art would travel all over the country teaching these skills to the others. Thus martial arts found their way into Japan and also Korea. Each of these countries adapted the styles to suit their own cultures and needs. Karate was taught in secret for many years, since the people who practiced it during those times were severely punished or at times, even killed. Hence these techniques were passed on by a method of onw to one teaching rather than writing down the information.
During the immigration and the world war, martial arts also found its way to America. But the Chinese were very conservative guarding their styles and techniques very closely until Bruce Lee opened the first martial arts school that accepted non-Asians also. After the World War II, there was a flourish of martial arts styles all over the world. Today the styles of martial arts are just too many for a common man to distinguish. The Korean martial arts style of Tae Kwon Do, the Chinese forms like Kung Fu and Wu Shu, the Japanese style of Karate, Judo and Jujutsu have all been developed and perfected over the years.
But whatever the style, martial arts always focuses on the discipline of the learner, the perseverance in developing physical strength and fitness, and the overall development of mind, body and spirit. There has been many martial arts masters over the times responsible for the development of these forms of art like Morihei Ueshiba, Mas Oyama, Bruce Lee, Yip Man, Hirokazu Kanazawa etc. Go through our gallery of martial arts paintings for a splendid collection of paintings on this art form.
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Thursday, August, 7 th
2008
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