\’He\’s the best painter in India,\’ MF Husain had said

March 12, On This Day

One of Bengal’s foremost artists

Described by leading contemporary artist MF Husain once as “the best painter in India”, Ganesh Pyne was born in 1937, and passed away at the age of 75 on March 12, 2013. Born in Kolkata, West Bengal, Pyne started as a watercolourist under the Bengal School of Art, and gradually shifted to gouache and finally to tempera, for his subsequent abstract and surrealist work period, in ochre, black and blue shades, developing his own style of “poetic surrealism”, fantasy and dark imagery, around the themes of Bengali folklore and mythology.

His inspiration began in childhood when he came across a printed drawing by Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of the Bengal School of Art movement. To this, he the influences of Frans Hals, Rembrandt’s handling of chiaroscuro and Paul Klee’s simplicity and cubism in developing his own style.

By the time the India art boom arrived in the 1980s, he started largely keeping to himself, fazed by the commercialism. Pyne was also known as “painter of darkness”, for using dark colours and motifs suggesting death; death, pain and solitude remained consistent themes in his work.