| Know about Mithila (Madhubani) Paintings | Mithila painting or Madhubani painting is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the Mithila region of Bihar state, India and the adjoining parts of Terai in Nepal |
- Madhubani painting or Mithila painting is a style of Indian painting, practiced in the Mithila region of Bihar state, India and the adjoining parts of Terai in Nepal
- Painting is done with fingers, twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchsticks, using natural dyes and pigments, and is characterized by eye-catching geometrical patterns
- There are paintings for each occasion and festival such as birth, marriage, holi, surya shasti, kali puja, Upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony), and durga puja ..... Read More......... Click here to read all about Mithila Painting
- The origins of
Madhubani painting or Mithila Painting are shrouded in antiquity
and mythology.
MITHILA PAINTING - Madhubani painting/Mithila painting has been done traditionally by the women of villages around the present town of Madhubani and Darbhanga (the literal meaning of Madhubani is forests of honey) and other areas of Mithila
- The painting was traditionally done on freshly plastered mud walls and floors of huts, but now they are also done on cloth, handmade paper and canvas
- Madhubani paintings are made from the paste of powdered rice....Read More.... Click here to read all about Mithila Painting
- Mithila painting, as
a domestic ritual activity, was unknown to the outside world
until the massive Bihar earthquake of 1934
MITHILA PAINTING - 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.
- Then a second natural disaster, a severe draught in the late 1960s, prompted the All India Handicrafts Board to encourage a few upper caste women in villages around Madhubani town to transfer their ritual wall paintings to paper as an income generating project
- Drawing on the region's rich visual culture, contrasting "line painting" and "color painting" traditions, and their individual talents, several of these women turned out to be superb artists. Four of them were soon representing India in cultural fairs in Europe, Russia, and the USA
- Their national and international recognition prompted many other women from many other castes - including harijans or dalits, the ex-"untouchables" - to begin painting on paper as well
- By the late 1970s, the popular success of the paintings - aesthetically distinct from other Indian painting traditions - was drawing dealers from New Delhi offering minimal prices for mass produced paintings of the most popular divinities and three familiar scenes from the Ramayana
- Out of poverty, many
painters complied with the dealers' demands, and produced
the rapid and repetitious images known as "Madhubani paintings." Nevertheless, with the encouragement of a number of outsiders - both Indian and foreign - other artists working within the same aesthetic traditions continued to produce the highly crafted, deeply individual and increasingly diverse work, now known as "Mithila Painting."
MITHILA PAINTING ( Peacock) - Mithila had long been famous in India for its rich culture and numerous poets, scholars, and theologians - all men....Read More.... Click here to read all about Mithila Painting
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| MITHILA PAINTINGS COLLECTION |
INTRODUCTION AND IMPORTANCE
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| MITHILA PAINTING (Marriage) |
ORIGINS
A BRIEF HISTORY
