Ganesh Pyne

Christie's New York, 17 October 2001, lot 257

This work is framed behind glass and is in good condition.
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Ganesh Pyne has developed a unique visual language to depict his own mythological universe. Regarded as a medievalist, Pyne's melancholic paintings typically portray skeletal mythological figures within dark and fantastical landscapes. Painting in watercolour and later tempera, he established a technique of building up translucent layers of pigment allowing him to achieve an ethereal luminescence in his works. His approach to colouration was influenced by the traditions of the Bengal School and in particular the work of Abanindranath Tagore whose paintings he first saw at the age of fifteen. He also studied the work of Nandalal Bose, and like Bose prepared his own pigments, binders and fixers.

Exposed to music, theatre and cinema from an early age, Pyne's iconography was derived from a combination of myth and memory. As a boy, Pyne was very close to his grandmother who used to tell him Bengali folk tales. These folk stories stimulated his imagination providing him with a visual vocabulary that he went on to use throughout his career. 'Even as a child, visual imagination was a strong element in his make-up. In the dead of afternoon, when the whole family rested, he would make paper boats, decorate them with coloured paper, bits of printed cloth, shining tinsel and other beautiful touches. He would float them in the reservoir of water in the inner courtyard, a common architectural element in traditional Bengali homes. Having floated them, Pyne would light a match and set the boats on fire. The glimmering reflections of the burning boats on water thrilled him.' (Ella Datta, Ganesh Pyne, His Life and Times, Calcutta 1998, p. 24). The theme of boats and journeys on water appear throughout his career. In Festival, Manasa the Bengali folk goddess of snakes and fertility emerges from the water flanked by a naga and flames. Pyne's fascination with popular local deities also included the Bengali bhakti saint Chaitanya who often appears in his works and stems from a childhood association; in front of his family house there was a shrine dedicated to the saint.

The morbid subject matter of many of his paintings was influenced by his own tragic circumstances. His father died when he was nine years old and this was shortly followed by the Calcutta riots of 1946. During the riots, Pyne witnessed looting, arson and murder amid the streets of Calcutta. Pyne and his family were evacuated from their home and the beloved Chaitanya shrine opposite was destroyed. Pyne recalls seeing a cart full of bodies, amongst them a dead woman from a high caste, naked, her skin grey and throat gashed with blood, her gold necklace still glistening. “I was shaken by the sight. Since then, I have been obsessed with the dark world.” (Saffronart, 2005, interview with the artist). The death of his grandmother in 1965 brought a further somber tone to his works. At the start of the 1970s, Pyne witnessed more suffering during the Pakistan and Bangladesh wars. His primary concerns then became depicting figures that were on the borders of society, migrants and social outcasts that increasingly populated the streets around him.