Ganesh Pyne Born and brought up in Kolkata, living in a crumbling family mansion in Kabiraj Row, north Calcutta (now Kolkata), Pyne grew up listening to his grandmother’s folktales and reading fantastic stories from children’s books, which was to create the vocabulary of his future art.
Also during his childhood years, he flipped through, Mouchak, a Bengali children’s magazine, to which his family subscribed, he came across a printed drawing by Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of the Bengal school art movement. This had deep impact on him, and he started reading avidly and drawing on his black slate with chalk for hours.
However, much greater impact was to come in 1946, first his father died early in the year, and his family was caught up in the Calcutta riots, which preceded the partition of India, and they had to be escorted to a safe zone at the Calcutta Medic.
His early work was deeply influenced by the Bengal school and especially Abanindranath Tagore was in water colour, and his first painting “Winter’s Morning”, portrayed him going to school along with his brother.
In a career spanning decades, his abstract and surrealist paintings starting with watercolours and later in gouache and tempera, were exhibited in group exhibitions across India and in Paris, London, Washington and Germany.
Pyne was given Raja Ravi Varma award by the Government of Kerala, and in 2011, the lifetime achievement award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
Vikash Kalra is a self-taught artist and writer based in New Delhi whose work has been exhibited across India and is held in several private and corporate collections.