Ganesh Pyne

Ganesh Pyne

Born in 1937, Ganesh Pyne finished school in 1959. Then, he joined the Government College of Arts and Crafts. He was particularly drawn to the skeletal remains of humans and animals. This became the subject of his canvas. Death was the epicenter of his paintings. In the 1960s, he began his career at Mandar Mullick’s studio.

He worked as a book illustrator and sketched for animated movies. He also joined Society of Contemporary Artists. It was hard to make ends meet those days as he had little money to buy colors. Yet he kept drawing with pen and ink. He titled his first painting ‘Winter morning.” It showed him and his brother going to school together. He was calm and composed outside. But, his art was rebellious. It vented his anger and dismay. It featured skulls, cadavers, and creepy faces against dark blue backdrops. He even depicted lesser-known mythological characters like Amba and Ekalavya.

Their lives were full of misery and curse. His art is a visual tour of the horrors perceived and experienced by him and his characters. Ganesh Pyne Paintings started with watercolour. He then moved to gouache and later to tempera.

Ganesh Pyne’s canvas often evokes the uneasy truth of life: ‘Death.’ As a Bengal school contemporary artist, his dark, Indian art explores its legends. He was born and raised in Kolkata’s decaying buildings. There, he heard his grandmother’s tales of Bengali folklore. He also read Bengali children’s magazines. These sparked an uncontainable imagination. But it was the 1946 Kolkata riots that scarred his 9-year-old mind. He saw countless dead bodies piled on top of each other. This incident moulded his artistic fancy destined towards shady imagery and eerie fantasy.

Awards

• Raja Ravi Varma Award, Government of Kerala, 2011
• Lifetime Achievement Award, Indian Chamber of Commerce, 2012