Bauwa Devi

Place: Jitwarpur

Born: 1945

Biography:

Bauwa Devi is a Mithila painting artist from Jitwarpur village of Madhubani District in Bihar, India. She was born in 1945. Mithila painting is an ancient folk art that originated in the region. It is recognized as a series of complex geometric and linear patterns traced on the walls of a house's inner chambers. It was later transferred to handmade paper and canvases. Bauwa Devi has been practising the Mithila art form for almost 60 years. She got married at the age of 12, and was encouraged by her mother-in-law to pursue painting. In 1966, Pupul Jayakar, then director of the All India Handicrafts Board, an advisory body of the Ministry of textiles, sent Mumbai artist Bhaskar Kulkarni to Madhubani to find art and artists. Bauwa Devi was a teenager when she met Kulkarni and was the youngest of the group of artists who formally transferred Mithila art from walls, where it was traditionally practised as mural art, to paper. Bhaskar Kulkarni took their works to museums and later encouraged Bauwa Devi to come to the National Crafts Museum. She was paid Rs.1.50 per painting for the first year that she worked for Kulkarni. Her work has since travelled to galleries and museums in Spain, France and Japan. In 2015, one of her paintings was gifted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Mayor of Hanover, Stefan Schosstok on his visit to India. Bauwa Devi won the National Award in 1984 and received the Padma Shri in 2017.