Mithila Painting of Bihar
Bihar’s unique and most famous folk art is its Mithila or Madhubani painting. These paintings were traditionally used for decorating the mud walls of village houses in the M
ithila region of Bihar.
However, this art form gained tremendous recognition during the last 40 years and is now a major source of income for several families in the Madhubani district. Scarves, ties, saris and dress materials are painted by Madhubani artists and sold throughout the country. Madhubani paintings on silk and paper also have a huge market abroad.
Even though this art form is now taught in many institutes and training centres in Bihar, the original madhubani painters hail from three villages in the Madhubani districy – Ranti, Jitwarpur and Rashidupr. Almost every household in these villages produces Madhubani paintings. Traditionally only women would paint but these days men and boy also learn this art form.
Women in the villages around Madhubani have been practicing their folk art for centuries. But the world at large came to know about these women and started considering then as “ artist” only during the last thirty years or so. Even now, most of their work remains anonymous.The women, some of them semi – illiterate, are in any case reluctant to consider themselves individual producers of ‘Work of Art’ and only a gew of them mark the paintings with their name.
The most overwhelming themes in Mithila paintings are marriage and Lord Krishna. Young girls learn to draw “Kobhar”, pictorial depiction of a post – marriage ritual, from their mothers. When they reach marriageable age, they draw a “Kobhar” and present it to their would be husbands.
A central figure of Mithila paintings is Lord Krishna, the eighth “ avatar” or incarnation of Vishnu and one of the most popular gods in India. The ecstatic circle in which he leads his ‘Gopis’, the vukkage women besotted with child Krishna, is interpreted as the wheel of life, of appearances revolving eternally.
Each Painting has a central towering form. The smaller gaps are the filled with birds, human beings, animals, Flowers and leaves. Viewed as a whole, the harmony reflected in the utilization of space and in the picturisation, conveys the artist’s understanding of peaceful co-existence between human and nature.
The understanding of the importance of living in harmony was, in the past, extended even to the practice of preparing colors from plant extract. Three cardinal rules governed this; no one was to destroy another’s garden, no money was to be spent on the collection of material and no colors were to be made out of edible plants. Thus, artists used the juices of locally – grown creepers and flowers such as heena leaves, palash, bouhainbillea, and the sap from a ‘neem’ tree, to obtain a range of colors, For black artists ingeniously removed the soot from ‘Diyas”and mixed it with plant juice to get a sort of black paint.
Since, no brush is used in these paintings; artists use a wooden splinter to draw fine black outlines without any preliminary sketching. The filling in of space is done with a “pihua” or a bamboo twig with a piece of cloth tied at one end.
If a traveler has the time to travel to Madhubani district, a seven hour road journey from Patna, the rewards are many. Paintings can be bought directly from the artists in the villages. One also gets the opportunity to see their homes the walls of which are decorated with Mithila paintings. Besides, family of artists receive visitors very warmly and are very generous with their hospitality which more than makes up for the sever hours lost in travel.
Since Madhubani is home to the original painters, the quality of painting seen here is far superior than the ones locally available in Patna. The price too are lesser here.
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