Death of an artist

Arindam Sarkar

Scarred by death around him, early in his life, he flirted with death all his life on Temperas. Last Tuesday, Ganesh Pyne – one of the foremost painters of post-Independent India, who took Bengal School of Art to Christie’s and Sotheby’s – kept date with death.

In the late fifties, when Bengal artists, studied the European masters and the New York School of Art, Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharya, Ganesh Haloi and Jogen Chowdhury looked inward. They revived the Bengal School gave a new impetus to the contemporary Indian art.

Eminent painter Lalu Prasad Shaw remembering his Government Art College days said Ganesh Pyne used to work at night and sleep in daytime. Art teachers impressed by Ganesh Pyne’s abilities took him directly in second year in the five-year diploma course. “A bold and imaginative painter, he used to get irritated with oil. He told his teachers to allow him to work with watercolor, wash and Tempera,” recollected Lalu Prasad Shaw.

As early as a Government Art College student in 1955, the doyens of Bengal School of Art Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore influenced Ganesh Pyne. Soon he blended with élan Hal Rembrandt’s light and shade and the Bengal School style.

In the sixties, remembers renowned painter Jogen Chowdhury, Ganesh Pyne got hooked to German Expressionist Paul Klee’s The Thinking Eye – the book which the maestro said was an eye-opener for him. Ganesh Pyne now began to draw lines, as he believed they were artistically and metaphorically meaningful. When Jogen and Ganesh went to Germany, the latter bought a pen to doodle and draw lines.

“Though fond of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, Abanindranath, Rembrandt and Paul Klee influenced Ganesh Pyne. He liked Mughal miniatures too. Ganesh is myth and reality,” said Jogen Chowdhury.

Post-Independence, most artists moved away from the Bengal School of Art, but Ganesh Pyne carried forward the legacy and created his own modernist and distinctive style. Art historians said communal riots, Partition, exodus and Naxal Movement left an indelible mark on the mind of Ganesh Pyne and his works.

“Agony, death, suffering and insecurity reflected in his works through darkness, scary symbols and skeletons. If Bikash Bhattacharya was direct, Ganesh Pyne was subtle, mystic, fossilized elements and fantasy,” said Professor of Kala Bhavan at Visva Bharti University Raman Shivkumar. “His The Assassin and Skeletal Horse are awesome.”

Ganesh Pyne ruled India’s art world from sixties to late eighties. In the seventies, Maqbul Fida Husain ranked him among the top ten Indian painters. “I place Ganesh Pyne with such Bengal School stalwarts as Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy and Nandalal Bose. And Indian greats like Bhupen Kakkar, Ghulam Md Sheikh, A Ramchandran, Somnath Hore and Bikash Bhattacharya in sixties and seventies,” said art critic Pranab Ranjan Roy.

Ganesh Pyne symbolised the continuity of Indian cultural tradition. While every artist could be categorized, he cut all barriers. He was deeply rooted to India’s cultural ethos and contemporary situations. He used subjects from myths, religion, cinema, theatre and social situations. “He was conscious of life under the shadow of death and related to it with light and darkness. A reclusive artist, who lived in his world of imagination and fantasy, Ganesh’s work is ambiguous,” added Pranab Ranjan Roy.

Art critic Nanak Ganguly said in the sixties, Ganesh Pyne with contemporary painters like late Prabahaka Barwe, Manjit Bawa and Arpita Singh experimented with indigenous subjects adopted from folklores and mythological literatures. “His figures have a low vantage point that looms over viewers. The melancholic Ganesh Pyne, who used to be haunted by death, frailty and impermanence of life, narrated his pain in Temperas,” said Nanak Ganguly.

In 1970, The Animal was auctioned at Sotheby’s and was purchased by Yehudi Menuhin. Same year, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited the National Art Gallery and bought his Mother and Child. Next day, Ganesh Pyne found a place in the PMO. Though Ganesh used all mediums like watercolor, oil, wash, pastel and mixed medium, his best was in Tempera.

The artist who was denied teaching assignments in Government Art College and Rabindra Bharati University, the doodler who began as an illustrator and an animation-maker influenced by Walt Disney, went on to become India’s most expensive painter. “A great experimenter, he will be remembered for creating fantasy, romanticism and mysticism on Tempera,” said famous painter Ganesh Haloi.

Ganesh Pyne was an introvert. With time, he became a loner and produced only four Temperas a year. He loved reading literature and watching cinemas of Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. A good listener, he stayed away from making political statements.

“In nineties, he developed a sharp and subtle stroke that produced some of his brilliant works,” remembers painter Sanat Kar who made him a member of the Society of Contemporary Artists. “People misunderstood him. That pained him.”

The artist, who in 2010-2011 painted for CIMA Gallery his magnum opus 42 Tempera Mahabharata series, two days before his death telephoned his friend Sanat Kar with whom he spent many quiet evenings at Shantiniketan. But Ganesh Pyne, who all his life brushed death, had no clue some hours later he will be walking in the clouds. 

GANESH PYNE'S TEMPESTUOUS TEMPERAS

The Assassin

The Voice

The Fire

Harbour

Rakta Karobi

Mother and Child

Fisherman

The Masks

The Creature
Mahabharata series