History of Madhubani Paintings
Madhubani Paintings as an art form originated among Hindu women who lived in villages that were established near the Madhubani town in northern India. The original idea behind the evolving of this art was to mark special events happening in a life time including the seasonal festivals, religious customs, marriages and other occasions. Further, the main reason for the life and growth of this art form was due to the age old tradition being followed in these villages of teaching this art to the daughters, thus ensuring this special painting skill was passed on from one generation to the next and was thus preserved from the winds of change by these women. As you come near the surroundings of northern part of Bihar, in India, you can see these art forms being practiced in form of paint figures taken from nature and myth with the painted surfaces including individual household and walls of the villages. With the people residing in Mithila region using this art form as their own form of language and in turn giving their region a distinguished identity, the history of this region is also not recent and goes back to around 2500 years. Though the villages around
Madhubani were practicing this folk art for past many centuries, the women who are carrying the legacy of the Madhubani art have been introduced to the outside world only recently, around a few decades ago. With many of the woman flocks engaged in painting being illiterate, they could not exploit their artistic power as individual producers of this work of art as only few could mark the drawn paintings in their own names. With changing times, some of the factors that led to the emergence of this art form from the confines of villages was the drought that struck this area in 1966-68. For supporting the loss in agriculture, this new source of income was promoted by the India Handicrafts Board who encouraged village women artists to paint these traditional art forms on handmade paper for commercial selling. Since that time, the art of Madhubani painting has replaced agriculture as primary source of income. Today, the state government of Bihar and Government of India have taken many encouraging steps towards preserving this diminishing art form and to bring it to international art platform so that people from around the world could know, appreciate and help this art form grow. The success achieved by the women of Mithila in propagating this art is also because of their expertise in successfully transferring the techniques of bhitti chitra used by them to paper medium, thus making this painted art take wheels and travel to far corners, reaping appreciation from art lovers around the world. Source: handicraft.indiamart.com/products/paintings/madhubani-mithila.html