History of the Ethnic Arts Foundation

Although ritual wall painting by women goes back hundreds of years in the historic Mithila region, painting on paper for sale only began in 1967. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the paintings and several painters, especially Ganga Devi and Sita Devi, gained great popularity in India and internationally. However, in 1977, while conducting research in the Mithila, anthropologist Raymond Owens observed that commercial dealers were offering only minimal prices for rapidly executed, mass produced paintings. As a result the quality of the paintings, the market for them, and the artists morale and desire to continue painting, were all rapidly deteriorating.

Inspired by M.N. Srinivas' call for anthropologists to be of use to villages, not just to study them, Owens encouraged the painters to take their time and produce their best possible work. He then purchased their paintings for well over the market price and brought them to the US for exhibition and sale. In addition, he established a system of returning the profits from sales to the painters, in effect, eliminating the middle man and providing the painters with a second and still larger payment for their work.

In 1980, Owens and several colleagues established the Ethnic Arts Foundation to help carry out these activities. When paintings were sold by the EAF, on Owens next trip to Madhubani, he would distribute the profits (1) to the individual painters whose work had been sold as further incentive and encouragement; (2) to the Master Craftsman's Association of Mithila (MCAM), an artists cooperative which he helped to found; and (3) to purchase still more paintings. Owens's travel expenses were covered by research grants, consultancies, or from his own funds. By this means, between 1977 and 2005, Owens, and then the EAF, purchased some 1,700 from well over 130 different painters." Over the years the EAF has organized numerous exhibitions and sales in the US, South Africa, and Iceland, sold some 850 paintings to individuals, collectors and museums, and returned tens of thousands of dollars in rupees to the Mithila painters.

Because of his warm personality, regular visits, and the income he helped to generate, Raymond Owens was an extremely popular, even beloved, figure in Madhubani and the surrounding villages. He was also a major source of personal support, professional encouragement, and suggestions regarding themes and subject matter that he believed would attract audiences and purchasers in the US. Early on he suggested that painters depict some of the better-known scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabarata. Paintings of Ram, Lakshman, and Sita entering the forest, Ram and Lakshman chasing the golden deer, Ravana's abduction of Sita, etc, all became popular. He then suggested that painters might do episodes -- even extended narratives in multiple paintings from local folklore, myths, and legends. He subsequently encouraged artists to try painting individual or multiple scenes and events in local life and ritual, as well as paintings of their own life histories. In the early 1980s, with help from the University of Wisconsin, Owens made two films about the painters and later nearly completed a book-length manuscript on the lives of some of the major painters. In 2000, he obtained large quantities of acid free hand-made paper for their work.

Raymond Owens was of course not the only outside influence on the painters and the development of the painting tradition. He was, however, a key and beloved figure in the villages around Madhubani town. When Owens died in July 2000, shortly after an extended visit to Madhubani, there was great consternation and dismay among the painters; they had lost a close friend and support. His friends and colleagues in the US were equally grieved.

Characteristically, however, he left a modest bequest in his will for the Ethnic Arts Foundation to carry on the work he had pioneered. With these funds, three close friends and colleagues in the EAF, Professor Joseph Elder, Dr. Parmeshwar Jha, and Dr. David Szanton have taken up the work that Owens' initiated. They are continuing to purchase paintings directly in the villages, organizing or assisting with international exhibitions and sales, and returning the profits directly to the artists. They have also set to work completing Owens's manuscript, bringing out other publications on the paintings, supporting research on the rapidly evolving painting tradition, and established this website to give further recognition to Mithila painting. In addition, in January 2003 the EAF established a free Mithila Art Institute (MIA) in Madhubani to further the training of talented younger Mithila painters. In 2003 25 competitively selected students studied at the MIA with Santosh Kumar Das, one of the major contemporary painters. In March 2004 another 20 students joined the MIA, and 8 of the most talented of the 2003 class continued working there. And in March 2004 another 20 students in a competition among 207 applicantants.

Also in 2004, the EAF comminssioned prize winning Mumbai documentary filmmaker Pravin Kumar, to make an hour-long film on the painters. The film completed in May 2005, is entilted "Naina Jogin (The Ascetic Eye)". It will be available for distributions later in the year.