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PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION, UK
36
GANESH PYNE
(1937 ‒ 2013)
Untitled
Signed and dated in Bengali (upper right)
1956
Watercolour on paper
13.25 x 12.5 in (33.5 x 32 cm)
$ 12,000 ‒ 15,000
Rs 7,68,000 ‒ 9,60,000
PROVENANCE:
Acquired from Galerie 88, Kolkata
EXHIBITED:
Ganesh Pyne: A Pilgrim in the Dominion of Shadows
,
Mumbai: The Museum Gallery presented by Galerie 88,
18‒24 April 2005
PUBLISHED:
Ranjit Hoskote,
Ganesh Pyne: A Pilgrim in the Dominion of
Shadows
, Mumbai: Galerie 88, 2005, p. 25
Ganesh Pyne’s art was shaped by
his childhood encounters with the
violence he experienced during
riots in Kolkata in pre‒Independent
India. These unsettling memories
emerge in his paintings in the form
of images drawn from myths and
private dreams. The present lot
comes from a particularly tragic
period in the artist’s life. Painted
after his older brother’s death, his
despair is evident from the skeletal
figure of the vulture, a predatory
bird symbolic of death. Left bereft
by loss, “Pyne’s temperas turned
from a heart‒wrenching bleakness
to a sublimation of personal grief.”
(Ella Dutta,
Ganesh Pyne: His Life
and Times
, Calcutta: CIMA Pvt.
Ltd., 1998, p. 61)
PROPERTY FROM AN EMINENT PRIVATE COLLECTION, MUMBAI
37
GANESH PYNE
(1937 ‒ 2013)
Vulture
Signed and dated in Bengali (lower left); bearing a label with title, signed
and dated in Bengali by the artist on the hardboard (on the reverse)
1982
Tempera on canvas
21.25 x 15.75 in (54 x 39.9 cm)
$ 46,875 ‒ 62,500
Rs 30,00,000 ‒ 40,00,000
PROVENANCE:
Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
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