Perhaps the best known genre of Indian folk paintings are the Mithila (also called Madhubani) paintings from the Mithila region of northern Bihar state, as well as the region across the border in Nepal. For centuries the women of Mithila have decorated the walls of their houses with intricate, linear designs on the occasion of marriages and other ceremonies, Painting is a key part of the education of Mithila women, culminating in the painting of the walls of the kohbar, or nuptial chamber on the occasion of a wedding. The kohbar ghar paintings are based on mythological, folk themes and tantric symbolism, though the central theme is invariably love and fertility.
The contemporary art of mithila painting was born in the early 1960’s, following the terrible Bihar famine. The women of Mithila were encouraged by the All-India Handicrafts Board to apply their painting skills to paper as a means of supplementing their meager incomes. Once applied to a portable and thus more visible medium, the skills of the Mithila women were quickly recognized. The work was enthusiastically bought by tourists and folk art collectors alike. As with the wall paintings, these individual works were painted with natural plant and mineral-derived colors, using bamboo twigs in lieu of brush or pen.
Over the ensuing sixty years a wide range of styles and qualities of Mithila art have evolved, with styles differentiated by region and caste - particularly the Brahmin, Kayastha and Harijan castes. Many individual artists have emerged with distinctive individual styles. Among the best known early Brahmin artists have been the late Ganga Devi (1928-1991), Baua Devi (b. Late 1940s), Sita Devi, Karpoori Devi and Mahasundari Devi (1922-2013). Today’s leading artists, working in the kayastha style, include Pushpa Kumari granddaughter of Mahasundari Devi. Other painters in their family include Pushpa’s brother Pradyumna Kumar and younger sister Mala Karn. Baua Devi was the only woman artist from India to show at the groundbreaking Magiciens de la Terre exhibit in 1989 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Works by several of these Mithila artists (Baua Devi, Sita Devi and Mahasundari Devi), were included in the show Stories, Ceremonies and Souvenirs: Popular Paintings from Eastern India at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Among the current generation of Mithila artists, Pushpa Kumari, and younger artists such as Mahalaxmi Karn and Shalini Karn have expanded the canon to embrace contemporary issues of education, technology, women's rights and marriage equality.
