Ganga Devi (1928–1991) was among the supreme exponents of the Katchni style of Madhubani — the manner that builds its images from intricate, hatched line rather than flat colour. She is best remembered for her ambitious narrative series: a complete Ramayana, and above all the Manav Jeevan (“Life of Mankind”), which followed the whole arc of a rural woman’s life from birth to old age.
Carrying the tradition far beyond the village, she painted murals at the Crafts Museum in Delhi and demonstrated her art at the Festival of India in the United States, even turning her own experience of cancer treatment in America into a remarkable series of paintings. Honoured with the Padma Shri in 1984, she showed that Madhubani could be a deeply personal, modern art of witness.