Ganesh Pyne (11 June 1937 - 12 March 2013) was an artist in the tradition of the Bengal School of Art, working in watercolours, gouache and finally tempera. Pyne is remembered for his canvases peopled with nightmare figures, distorted bodies and fictional beasts, in an oblique, surrealist style. He trained at the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata, graduating in 1959. He then worked as an animator, assisting on advertising films. In 1963, Pyne joined the Society of Contemporary Artists, a collective of painters, sculptors and printmakers based in Kolkata, that collaboratively organised exhibitions and classes. Pyne exhibited infrequently, participating in the Paris Biennale in 1969 and some shows in Europe and America, but generally withdrawing from solo shows. He came to be regarded as a recluse, eschewing publicity and producing a small body of works each year. Influenced by the style of Abanindranath Tagore and the Bengal School, Pyne also drew on the expressionist style of Paul Klee and the Renaissance tradition of chiaroscuro, eventually forging a unique idiom that was entirely his own. Pyne received the Gagan Abani Puroskar by Visva Bharati in 1997, a D. Litt. from Kalyani University and the Kalyani and Abanindra Purashkar by the West Bengal Government in 2004. He also received the Raja Ravi Varma from the Kerala Government in 2011.

ESSAYS

The artist of the inner life

by Soumitra Das

Published in The Telegraph, 2014

Jottings: Works by Ganesh Pyne, being displayed at CIMA Gallery till November 22, offers viewers the key to the secret world of the imaginings - often dark, tortured, wild and turbulent - of this reclusive artist who died last year. Pyne’s published writings,

Ganesh Pyne

The artist of the inner life

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