From wedding ritual wall art, kohbar finds places in contemporary art, says Kavita Kanana Chandra
The Lalit Kala Academy in Patna was vibrant with the colours of Kohbar paintings, the ceremonial wedding paintings, celebrating the Maithili roots. The show held from November 15 to November 17, 2025 offers a glimpse into Mithila’s traditions. Mithila is the northeast region of Bihar and its inhabitants, Maithils, have retained the ties of traditional rituals and culture that make it distinct in its language, art, culture and cuisines.
Aptly titled; Kohbar – Route to Roots, the organising team of Mithila artists duo Alka Das and Nibha Labh, along with INTACH Patna chapter’s Bhairab Lal Das put up a spectacular first-ever Kohbar exhibition of 52 artists, most of them displaying Kohbar as an art in an exhibition for the first time. For them Kohbar is a traditional art, they have seen from childhood, passed from one generation of women to another.
“Kohbar painting is a ritual painting done during the wedding in Mithila, on the eastern wall of the nuptial room, locally called Kohbar Ghar. All the puja (worship) happens before the Kohbar. It is one of the most symbolic paintings, where man, nature and culture are represented symbolically,” says Manisha Jha, a Delhi-based National awardee Mithila artist and architect, founder of Madhubani Art Centre.
In the contemporary world, people talk about saving the environment. But, the women of Mithila have been worshipping nature from ancient times and depicting the co-existence of humans and nature in Mithila paintings, which include the Kohbar.
“Kohbar is very important in the Mithila region and without Kohbar a wedding cannot be solemnized,” informs Alka Das. The concept of holding an exhibition, exclusively on Kohbar came to her when she participated with a group of Madhubani artists in a popular television show. During conversations on folk art from Mithila, she was taken aback by a remark by a man, with roots from Mithila, that Kohbar was merely a folk art and had not much significance.
It was important for her that the younger generation and those outside Bihar are aware of Kohbar’s relevance in Mithila weddings and how it is elevated as an art by womenfolk; hence Kohbar-Route to Roots was conceptualized. The exhibition took place due to the encouragement and help from Ashok Kumar Sinha (Additional Director of Bihar Museum). Scholars, artists and art lovers graced the occasion.
Hailed as the living legend of Mithila art, Bimla Dutta from the Ranka village in Madhubani, enlivened the occasion. She started painting in her village courtyard and today her paintings are displayed in museums around the world. For the visitors it was a delight to walk through the gallery, admiring the myriad forms of Kohbar, each artist interpreting it in their way. Some were painted in single colours like red, yellow or blue; some in a combination of colours, except black. The number of items depicted in a Kohbar is fixed.
Artists Saroj Mallick, Saroj Thakkur, Alka Das, Nibha Labh, Nutan, Kavita Das, Kavita Dutta, Kalpana Madhukar, Radha Das, Radha Kumari, Rashmi Prabha, Bijay Dutta Mani, Saumya Aanchal, Amrita Das and several other artists showcased their beautiful Kohbar art. The young artist Saumya’s Kohbar in blue won the hearts of several viewers.
Amid women painters, Shardendu Anand’s intricate Kohbar in multicolour stood out for its fine work and artistry. Saroj Mallick explained that red or multihued Kohbar are made in the bride’s house to decorate Kohbar ghar, a separate room where the newlyweds spend four days. On the fourth day called “Chaturthikam”, Chauthhari puja is done after which the groom leaves for his home.
In early times, the girl would remain in her parent’s house for six months to a few years before gauna (when the girl would leave for her husband’s home) took place. At her in-laws’ home, a Kohbar in yellow was made for rituals and puja for the day the bride arrived.
“It is compulsory in Mithila wedding for the bride and groom to worship the Kohbar with sindoor (vermillion) after the wedding”, said Saroj Thakkur, another artist. The bamboo depicts male and purain ka paat (lotus leaf) indicates female energy. The Gods and nature are witnesses to their worship.
Mythologically, it is believed that the Kohbar of Lord Ram and Sita was done by Goddess Parvati herself. Traditionally when the wedding is fixed, the oldest ahibati (married woman) puts a red dot on the wall. Afterwards women of the household sketch and paint the Kohbar.
Though Kohbar is made for weddings in Bihar and other places, those from Mithila are a class apart. Artistically done with intricate details with symbols of love, fertility and prosperity depicted by celestial objects, plants and animals. “There is instruction through pictures for the newlyweds how to navigate their married life and also how to handle the ups and downs and the good and bad in their lives together,” explained Mallick.
Common motifs include lotuses, fish, turtles, trees, celestial and religious figures. The lotus grows in abundance, a symbol of fertility. Each Kohbar has a central mandala surrounded by six mandalas of stylized purain paat (lotus leaves), surrounded by figurines and abstract drawings. The vertical stem cut across the mandalas and has a female face on the pinnacle.
There are motifs of bushes, bamboo, bel (wood apple), banana, lotus, paan patta and laung (cloves). It is an ecosystem, where everything exists in harmony. The pictures of deities and celestial objects are invoked to bless the couple. The Sun, moon and navgraha (9 planets) symbolize life-giving energy while Panch Devta (Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesha, Shakti and Surya) bless the couple. The painting shows pictures of things that grow rapidly, symbolising fertility, like fish, bamboo, lotus, purain ka paat (lotus leaf), among others. But all the efforts in painfully decorating the Kohbar would be transient for these would fade with time, the walls whitewashed and ready for another wedding and a new Kohbar. However, with time, as with Madhubani paintings that transformed from paintings on mud walls to canvas and paper; Kohbar also emerged as a form of art. At the exhibition, Manisha Jha’s PowerPoint presentation; “Kohbar the Mystical Painting of Bihar: Journey from Ritual Wall art to Contemporary Art, from Mud Walls to Paper”, traces the mythical and historical origin of Kohbar in Mithila painting from 1934 to 2024.
It was very informative as she explained the main elements of Kohbar’s painting and its symbolic meaning. Why is there a border in Kohbar and why a pair of parrots are entangled? The border in Kohbar is drawn to make a boundary. The space is created for the God and Goddesses to sit and bless the couple. The latpatia suga shows the entangled parrots in love. The Goddess Naina Jogin-the veiled one-eyed Goddess- is there to protect the couple. Slides showed the great artists of Mithila painting like Shashikala Devi, Ganga Devi, Mahasundari Devi, Bimala Dutta and other pioneers and contemporary artists working on different mediums. Ganga Devi, known to draw different representations of bamboo was shown painting Kohbar at Crafts Museum Delhi in 1989. There was Kohbar by early painters in ink on Nepal paper from 1968, natural pigments on paper pasted on cloth by Mahasundari Devi, acrylic on canvas by Bimala Dutta and poster colour on handmade paper by Manisha Jha. She also showed the metamorphosis of Kohbar through contemporary adaptation, where a part of Kohbar is artistically visualized as art. Traditionally a domain of women, contemporary artist Santosh Kumar Das has artistically represented Kohbar, acrylic on paper. The three-day exhibition was a forum for discussions on Kohbar as an art and craft and the commercialisation of folk art.
