SNIPPETS OF INFORMATION
PAINTINGS - Madhubani
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Jul 2021
Madhubani paintings have many colour settings. Deep red,
green, blue, black,light yellow, pink etc. Red is dominant in many
paintings. A bamboo twig is used for drawing outlines. For filling
colour pihua, a small piece of cloth tied to a twig is used. Women
gather together and make the painting. A leader among them draws the
composition and others fill colour. Younger girls assist the older
women. Families keep paper notes of the artwork, to be made during
ceremonies. It is even shared with the same caste from different
villages. The styles get repeated but with variations, though the idioms
remain the same.
Source: Goddess Durga - images from Madhubani painting, Soma Ghosh, deccanviews.wordpress.com
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Jul 2021
Mithila painting, as a domestic ritual activity, was unknown to the
outside world until the massive Bihar earthquake of 1934. House walls
had tumbled down, and the British colonial officer in Madhubani
District, William G. Archer, inspecting the damage "discovered" the
paintings on the newly exposed interior walls of homes. Archer - later
to become the South Asia Curator at London's Victoria and Albert Museum -
was stunned by the beauty of the paintings and similarities to the work
of modern Western artists like Klee, Miro, and Picasso. During the
1930s he took black and white photos of some of these paintings, the
earliest images we have of them. Then in a 1949 article in the Indian
art journal, Marg, he brought the wall paintings to public attention
Source: mithilapaintings-eaf.org
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Jul 2021
Ethnic Arts Foundation (EAF), a non-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to sustaining the Mithila painting tradition
In 1977, while conducting research in Madhubani, the American
anthropologist, Raymond Owens, was stunned by the beauty of some of the
paintings on paper. Aware that commercial dealers were grossly
underpaying the artists for mass produced paintings he encouraged
artists to take their time, do paintings they truly cared about, and
offered to buy them for 5 to 10 times the dealers' prices. When Owens
returned to the US he showed the paintings to fellow anthropologist,
David Szanton, who was equally entranced by them.
Then in 1980, with several colleagues they established the Ethnic
Arts Foundation (EAF), a non-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to
sustaining the Mithila painting tradition, and most immediately, to hold
the funds from sales until Owens could redistribute them to the artists
on his next trip to India.
Source: mithilapaintings-eaf.org
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