Ganesh Pyne

Early life and education Born and brought up in Kolkata, living in a crumbling family mansion in Kabiraj Row, north Calcutta (now Kolkata), Pyne grew up listening to his grandmother's folktales and reading fantastic stories from children's books, which was to create the vocabulary of his future art. Also during his childhood years, he flipped through, Mouchak, a Bengali children's magazine, to which his family subscribed, he came across a printed drawing by, Abanindranath, the founder of the Bengal school art movement. This had deep impact on him, and he started reading avidly and drawing on his black slate with chalk for hours.

Career Pyne commenced his artistic career in the early 1950, as a book illustrator and doing sketching for animation films at Mandar Mullick's studio in Kolkata. During this period, not having enough money to buy colours, he made small drawings in pen and ink; and in 1963 joined the Society for Contemporary Artists, which had local artists like Bikash Bhattacharjee, Shyamal Datta Ray, Dharmanarayan Dasgupta and Ganesh Haloi.

His early work was deeply influenced by the Bengal school and especially Abanindranath Tagore was in water colour, He participated in Paris Biennale in 1969 and contemporary Indian Painting in West Germany in 1970. However, by the time, the India art boom arrived in the 1980s, he started largely keeping to himself, fazed by the commercialism.

In a career spanning decades, his abstract and surrealist paintings starting with watercolours and later in gouache and tempera,

Pyne died on 12 March 2013 at a Kolkata hospital where he was admitted following a heart attack, at the age of 75. He is survived by his wife and son.

Artistic approach Pyne started as a water-colourist in the Bengal school mode, and gradually shifted to gouache and finally to tempera, for his subsequent abstract and surrealist work period, in ochre, black and blue shades. He was also known as "painter of darkness", for using dark colours like black and blue and motifs suggesting death, and death, pain and solitude remained consistent themes in his work. The art critic Ranjit Hoskote termed him "a poet of melancholia", who "explored elements of the subconscious; the mercenary, the demons and the angels were aspects of the self split from his waking reality"

A 1998 documentary film on him, A Painter of Eloquent Silence: Ganesh Pyne directed by Buddhadeb Dasgupta was awarded the National Film Award for the Best Arts Film.

Exhibitions and shows 'World Youth Festival', Prague-1968 Indian International Triennial, New Delhi-1968 & 71 Paris Biennial, Paris-1970 Exhibition in aid of Menuhin School of Music, Royal Academy of Arts, London-1970 International Festival of Art, Cagnes-sur-Mer-1975 'Modern Indian Painting', Hirschhorn Museum, Washington DC-1982 'Contemporary Indian Art', Festival of India, Royal Academy of Arts, London-1982 'Indische Kunst Heute', Darmdstadt, Germany-1982 & 86 'Trends and Images', CIMA Gallery, Calcutta-1993 'Chamatkar – Myth and Magic in Indian Art', curated by CIMA Gallery, Whiteleys Art Gallery, London-1996 'Tryst with Destiny – Art from Modern India', Singapore Art Museum, Singapore-1997 'Image beyond Image' travelling exhibition of Indian paintings from the Glenbarra Art Museum, Himeji, Japan to New Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore and Bombay-1997. 'Germinal', solo show of jottings, curated by Arun Ghose at India Art Fair 2014, New Delhi by Sanchit Art-2014. Memorialising Ganesh Pyne: Photographs & Photo Collages by Veena Bhargava at Akar Prakar Kolkata, 2020. Curatorial Advisor - Ella Dutta Ganesh Pyne: From the Shadows at Akar Prakar, Delhi 2022. Curated by Siddhi Shailendra

Books on Pyne

Ganesh Pyne's Twilight Dreams by Vaishali Shroff. Publisher: Art1st (April 2024) Thirst of a Minstrel: The Life and Times of Ganesh Pyne by Shiladitya Sarkar. Publisher: Rupa & Co. (November 2004) Ganesh Pyne: A Pilgrim in the Dominion of Shadows by Ranjit Hoskote. Publisher: Galerie 88, Kolkata (2005) Enchanted Space: The Private World of Ganesh Pyne by Sovon Som. Publisher: CIMA (2006) Ganesh Pyne, his life and times by Ella Datta. Publisher: Centre for International Modern Art (1998)

Memorialising Ganesh Pyne: Photographs & Photo Collages by Veena Bhargava. Essay by Ella Dutta. Publisher: Akar Prakar and Mapin Publishing (2020). Ganesh Pyne: A Painter of Eloquent Silence by Pranabranjan Ray. Publisher: Lalit Kala Akademi and Akar Prakar (2018)