Painter Ganesh Pyne passes away

In olden times, grandmothers would often narrate stories, which were nothing short of fantastic, to their grandchildren. These stories had princes, horses, battlefields and impossible magic.

Ganesh Pyne could translate these surreal stories and create the actual mysticism of these tales through his works,” begins artist Samir Mondol, a Mumbai-based painter, who, as a young man, spent hours with Ganesh Pyne over tea and “thick buttered bread topped with sugar” at a little tea shop on College Street in Kolkata.

Pyne, who at the age of 76 passed away yesterday, in a hospital in Kolkata, of a heart attack, left a rather noticeable crater in the art fraternity.

“He was the first artist I had come to know when I stepped into the world of art,” says painter Paresh Maity, “His works were delicate and mesmerising and to put it mildly, like jewels. Yes, he was reclusive and known to be quite shy but once you’re with him, it was a completely different world. Our conversations would go everywhere and he was a very different man than what was known. We would talk about everything under the sun. It’s a great loss for the art world.”

“You know, people knew him to be someone who was very traditional, even primitive perhaps, but in the 70s, when a man called Mondar Mullick started a celluloid animation unit, Ganesh Pyne used to work there as an in-betweener. An in-betweener would paint the various movement shots in an animation scene and it was not only laborious but something a painter wouldn’t really venture into. But he worked there and that too at a time when half of us were as technologically challenged — with no mobile phones or television in our homes.

He also used to paint illustrations of scenes from the Mahabharata for books for young people. These illustrations were no bigger than a post card but his sense of detailing was so great that  each of those drawings was a masterpiece,” adds Mondol, “He had no ego. He was shy and at the same time quite lazy, if I might add. He hated going out. I am going to miss him. I still have some handwritten letters he’d sent me.”

Art curator Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya, who received the news of Pyne’s death almost as soon as it happened, says, “I was just discussing him with actor Soumitra Chatterjee who happens to be friends with Ganesh Pyne. I really don’t have the right to say much but he used to be one of the pillars of Indian art and he is now gone. The way he handled the Tempera medium in a contemporary way, I honestly do not know any other artist who can do that. He painted little, didn’t go out much, there was no gimmick in his life and he just spoke through his works — that is, or was, Ganesh Pyne,” adding, “He has not left behind hundreds of paintings but each of his works will remain immortal and through them, the artist himself.”