Page 85 - Eye of the beholder

Ganesh Pyne produced intense, often unsettling, art that featured dark colours and dreamlike imagery
in watercolour, gouache, and, most memorably, tempera. He claimed to have been influenced by the
art of renowned Bengali painter Abanindranath Tagore as well as such Western figures as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Paul Klee, and, rather surprisingly, Walt Disney. There was never a time when his paintings
did not reveal a dream-like quality. There has been no one like him in Indian art before, or since, who has managed to combine eloquence and mystery in equal measure. Whether he worked on paper or canvas, his choice of tempera over say, oil, is telling. He took to tempera while still an art student and over 50 years acquired an unrivalled virtuosity in it. His works, usually finished matte, nevertheless reflected light with
a beguiling sensitivity; and therein lay his mastery. Pyne started with watercolours, moved on to gouache, and finally found his medium in tempera, a medium that was popular in 15th-century Europe. He became a master at layering light and dark to create the intense glows that rendered his images so enigmatic.
In Pyne's hands, the medium and the technique combined to create a mood of distortion, a world of misshaped people and demonic animals.
Pyne’s predilection for death and other dark subject matters is believed to have had its roots in the violence that he observed during the Hindu-Muslim rioting in Calcutta that preceded the partition (1947) of India. His first brush with death was in the summer of 1946, when communal riots had rocked Kolkata. His family was forced out of their crumbling mansion. As he roamed around the city, he stumbled upon a pile of dead bodies. On the top was the body of a stark naked old woman, with wounds on her breast. Even as blood flowed out of her body, her necklace shone.
No wonder then his paintings rarely have light backgrounds. Death also finds its way back into his canvas through different motifs. Working mostly in tempera, his paintings are rich in imagery and symbolism. In painting after painting, skulls, skeletons, piercing arrows and phantasms indicate a vision of the world, that was, above all, tragic. Primary colours are rare in Pyne's universe. Instead, there are amber browns and ashy blues. Instead of precise blocks of colour, there are overlapping layers. Bodies often seem lit from within, as if they are burning from inside outwards.
Pyne was born in Kolkata and grew up in a decaying mansion. He also grew up on stories told by his grandmother --- fold stories, mythological stories, and fairy tales. He spent several evenings in smoky Kolkata cafes discussing communism and Picasso with his friends. "My childhood memories revolve around Kolkata. The sounds and smells of this city fill my being. I love Kolkata." In 1963, he joined the Society for Contemporary Artists. During that period he made small drawings in pen and ink. "I did not have enough money then to buy color," Pyne says. This was also the period of experimentation. The anger and despair of the 70s fuelled one of the most fruitful periods' in his life as an artist that culminated in works like 'Before the Chariot' and 'The Assassin'.
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