Somnath Hore

Bowring's Art Auctioneers, New Delhi, November 2002, lot 199

Somnath Hore's move towards sculpture during the mid-70s was an extension of his printmaking. His bronzes were not concerned with a narrative nor an accurate representation of his subjects but with the depiction of the plight of man. His bronzes were 'neither sentimental nor shocking, just the anatomy of the suffering body realized in its intimate sensuality... Like a majority of his figurative prints they were fundamentally iconic... they came charged with the poignancy of a Madonna or a Pieta. (R. S. Kumar, 'Somnath Hore: A Reclusive Socialist and a Modernist,' Bengal Art: New Perspectives, Pratikshan, Kolkata, 2010, p. 75) 'In the hands of a lesser artist the images could have slid to sentimentalism. But Hore discovers in suffering a tragic grandeur, the terrible beauty of truth.' ('Somnath Hore; Epic Vision of Suffering' Art of Bengal, A Vision Defined, CIMA, Kolkata, 2002, p. 79)

'These figures brought alive the mangled, lacerated, gaunt, bone and rag bodies from which his journey as an artist began in all its miserable materiality  (R. S. Kumar, 'Somnath Hore: A Reclusive Socialist and a Modernist,' Bengal Art: New Perspectives, Pratikshan, Kolkata, 2010, p. 75). His bronzes are not sculpture, 'because they've dispensed with mass and volume... And in so doing they echo the bristly starkness of the drawing and the skeletal economy of the etchings. There's a complex structuring involved: the balance between the metal used as raggedly "sheets" and the eloquent hollows they encompass or imply; between the knotted stick limbs and the mask-like heads... Twisted, tangled sheets of bronze, textured with creases and coarse weaves and subtly-nuanced patination are breathed into life with deceptive ease.' ('Somnath Hore, Epic Vision of Suffering,' Art of Bengal, A Vision Defined, CIMA, Kolkata, 2002, p. 79)