[This painting is made by famous artist and cartoonist Mahendra Prasad]
[This piece of article is provided by Ms. SONAM DHINGRA who is a prominent art teacher at City Vocational Public School, Meerut, by profession and an artist herself. She has done in-depth research on indian arts and crafts.]
In 1968, a gruelling drought hit the villages of Mithila. The people started perishing due to hunger. Till then, only a, handful of people knew about this art, However, the Ex-union Minister, Late Lalit Narayan Mishra was well acquainted with the characteristics features of Mithila Paintings. The well known connoisseur of art from Maharashtra Late Bhaskhar Kulkarni too was fond of this particular school of painting. So were Late Upendra Maharatti and Pupul Jaykar they knew about it.
They came here with a plan in their mind: they distributed papers to the people of Jitwarpur and Ranti and asked them to paint on them. After collecting those pieces of art, they went to Delhi. There, the people showed massive interest in such paintings for their originality, colours combinations and thematic specialty. The Mithila painting immediately carved out a place for itself among the art lovers.
After this, the papers began to be distributed and paintings began to travel in different directions. It is very rare that a disaster causes such type of miracles. From the wall of villages of Madhubani, the paintings, descended on the papers and cloths. Now, these paintings are getting displayed in art galleries, beautifying the wall of massive bungalows and adding glamour to the plush drawing rooms both in India and aboard. They are also finding their places in five star hotels, airports, railway stations and ports. The fashions mongers are using Madhubani painting as an independent fashion model for women. The exhibitions of Madhubani painting have been staged in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. In Germany, Japan, France, Poland, Denmark. Italy. Canada and USA, this particular form of painting have also been exhibited.
