Phyllis Kind Gallery - Exhibitions

Women of Bihar

On exhibition at Phyllis Kind Gallery thru April 23 are 20 women artists from India. The works you will see have been made recently by a very specific and highly regarded group. To quote Barbara Rossi's 1998 book published by Oxford University Press (From the Ocean of Painting):

"A tradition of domestic ritual painting has perdured, apparently from ancient times, in Hindu households in the remote villages of North Bihar, bounded by the Himalayas and Nepal on the north and by the Ganges River on the south. This tradition is practiced and transmitted from generation to generation by non-professional women artists who paint on the floors and walls of their homes to make daily life and special events auspicious.

In the late 1960's the women were encouraged to transfer their painting composition to paper for circulation to viewers beyond the region's immediate borders as part of a famine relief effort. This work is characterized by an emphasis on intense colors applied flatly in shapes marked by thin contour lines or by complex but elegant linear structures and dense linear patterning in black and red. Initially, they replicated the themes and subjects that have been traditionally employed in the ritual painting of the region, but they quickly developed, however, other kinds of presentations with other functions that include narration of myths and personal events and histories. In this transformation of a village tradition to a phenomenon known throughout the world, some gifted individuals have emerged with a unique and personal styles."