Artist of the Collection · Jitwarpur, Madhubani, Bihar

Baua Devi

A pioneering Mithila painter whose work carries village stories onto paper.

Baua Devi is a leading practitioner of Mithila painting. Her compositions draw on mythology, ritual and lived experience, with vivid figures and recurring serpent imagery.

View a work in the collection

Baua Devi artwork in the Saraswati Foundation collection

The artist

Mithila painting, carried forward

Baua Devi helped bring Mithila painting from the walls of village homes to paper and international exhibition spaces. Her work sustains a living visual language while centring women’s perspectives, myth and everyday life.

Awards & honours

2017

Padma Shri

India’s fourth-highest civilian honour, conferred in the field of Art.

1989

Magiciens de la Terre

Participated in the landmark exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Biography

From Jitwarpur to the world

Baua Devi comes from Jitwarpur in Madhubani district, Bihar, where Mithila painting is rooted in domestic ritual and community life.

In the 1960s, artists from the region began transferring wall paintings to paper. Baua Devi became one of the early practitioners of this transition, helping the tradition reach museums and exhibition audiences.

Her paintings draw on mythological narratives and everyday experience. Serpent forms and expressive figures recur in her work, rendered in the richly patterned language of Mithila painting.

Biography synthesised from museum, gallery and institutional profiles.

Selected exhibitions