Page 88 - Eye of the beholder

Ganesh Pyne's childhood was affected by the Hindu-Muslim rioting in his home town that preceded the partition of India in 1947. One can suppose that Pyne’s predilection for dark subject matters could have its roots in the violence that he observed during this time.
He studied at Government College of Art & Craft, which is the oldest art institution in India, where he graduated in 1959. Pyne was initially influenced by the brothers Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore of the Bengal school of Art – who led the development of modern Indian art – but then evolved towards a less pleasant and decorative style. As Shahnaz Habib wrote in his obituary on March 20th, 2013 in The Guardian: “While Pyne came from this tradition, his vision was much darker. Moving away from romantic and nationalist themes, he explored much more existential questions”.
This came along with the change of the technique: from water colour, he turned to gouache and then since the mid 1960’s to tempera. He began to explore this new technique and perfected the building up of surfaces and textures on canvas. He became a master at layering the brown, ochre, black and blue shades with much patience. This also meant, that he produced less than a dozen artworks a year.
Pyne was not prolific, producing nine or 10 works a year. Although he participated in the Paris Biennale
in 1969 and other shows in Europe and north America, he shied away from solo shows and preferred
not to explain his art. As if paralleling the movement from transparent to opaque in his medium, he also became increasingly averse to publicity. Pyne won several awards and was the subject of the documentary film A Painter of Eloquent Silence (1998). His signature style shaped from his own experiences of solitude, alienation, pain, horror and moods of tenderness and serenity comes to surface in each of his works.
At times, these images are offshoots of an idea that may have flitted through his mind. At others, they resonate lines from poems that may have made an impression on his mind.
Pyne has been a favourite of collectors since the 1960’s. in the last few decades, his fame also
spread internationally as he began getting recognition as one of the greatest among the modern and contemporary artists of India. His paintings started commanding increasingly high prices, with his canvases frequently crossing the USD 150,000 mark. Pyne had a philanthropic heart, and often gave away his paintings to grassroot level organizations involved in social development activities. A few of the paintings from the Sadhu collection owe their origin to such donations.
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