Ganesh Pyne (India, 1937-2013)


Crown Signed in Bengali and dated '78 lower left Tempera on paper on canvas48 x 43cm (18 7/8 x 16 15/16in).
|Provenance:Private Collection, Dubai;Christie's Hong Kong, Southeast Asian and Modern Indian Paintings, 29 May 2005, Lot 110.Bonhams is delighted to offer the present lot by one of the most noteworthy contemporary artists of the Bengal School. Ganesh Pyne developed his own style of "poetic surrealism," fantasy and dark imagery, which were drawn from Bengali folklore and mythology. He had an impressionable childhood as he witnessed the violent years preceding Indian independence including the communal riots in Calcutta in the 1940s. He trained as an artist at the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta but also worked as an animator for a few years. He worked with various mediums including watercolours and gouache, but finally settled with tempera.His works exude an aura of brooding sadness and angst. Pyne tries to explore more existential questions though the imaginative and dark rendering of disfigured people and demonic animals. Skeletons, boats, bones, broken crowns, creaking doors and dilapidated windows are recurring motifs in his overlapping layered paintings. The employment of the dark shades of black, blue and brown assisted in setting the mood that Pyne was trying to echo through his paintings. 'Crown' is a masterful piece of mysticism and fantasy that embodies distortion both in the subject matter and the application of paint. This work is typical of the way Pyne deals with the delineation of eyes in his work. This unsettling and grotesque myth like demon is characteristic of the artist's intense imagery that makes him one of the most individual artists from the subcontinent. "...true darkness gives one a feeling of insecurity bordering on fear but it also has its own charms, mystery, profundity, a fairyland atmosphere. Darkness still gives me the same feelings not as it did when I was a child. The only difference is that I try consciously to analyze these feelings now. Mythology and fables also fascinate me. Probably for the same reasons, I now look at things with eyes that are, I think, more mature but I also have a sneaking suspicion that when one is confronted with primeval values, one has little to gain through maturity..." (Ganesh Pyne in conversation with Arany Banerjee, LKC 15, April, 1973)