Ganesh Pyne

As he grew up listening to grandmother’s narration of folk tales and puranik myths in dim-twilights, the shy and curious youngster increasingly willed to visualise the fantasies he would weave around what he listened to, through doodling. But not until he himself had started reading Abarindranath’s tales for children, and still later, drooling over the reproductions of his darkness-illuminating drawings and paintings — published in contemporary periodicals — that Ganesh felt the urge of visualizing imagination. But before gaining that kind of mental angle, a traumatic worldly experience left a permanent effect on the future of his creative personality. The Great Calcutta Killing of 1946, one of the main events that ultimately led to the partition of India, even though temporarily – uprooted the family from its century-old home and made the not-yet teen-aged boy face violence, destruction and death. Later, it would not so much be the facts of violence, destruction and death, but apprehension and premonition of these, would condition his creative gaze into events and happenings. However, all these were to be revealed slowly later through his creative career.

After completing his secondary education, Ganesh Pyne took admission to Calcutta’s Government Art College, from where he graduated in 1959. He utilised his stint at the art school not only in honing his skill in standardised art practice and widening the horizon of visual study of past art, but also in research into ways and means of choosing and adapting art technology for his personal idiom. Mature Pyne’s art amply demonstrates his success in this score. After the completion of his institutional art education, Pyne got engaged in making of animation film, for living. Alongside, he also got deeply involved in print-media publications designing, especially in book illustration, wherein also he left his mark of individuality.

Although apparently shy and introvert, Ganesh Pyne’s mental involvement with human affairs never let him to be a recluse or an outsider. In fact, his interest in on-going art activities led him to get associated with the Society of Contemporary Artists, then Calcutta’s most happening artists’ group. However, the basically lone sojourner, could never march with a regiment.