Ganesh Pyne valuation

Ganesh Pyne (1937–2013) was born in Calcutta and graduated from the Government College of Art & Craft there in 1959. In his early years he illustrated books and made sketches for animated films at Mandar Mullick's studio in the city. He began in watercolour in the manner of the Bengal School, moved to gouache and then to tempera, which gives his small, dense pictures a translucent quality, in a palette mostly of ochre, black and blue, lit by a trapped, eerie light. He called his style poetic surrealism. Its subjects come from Bengali folklore and mythology and his grandmother's stories, and later from peripheral characters in the Mahabharata such as Ekalavya and Amba; mortality, pain and solitude recur throughout. He joined the Society of Contemporary Artists in 1963 and showed at the Paris Biennale and, in 1982, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, and CIMA in Kolkata gave him his first major exhibition in 1998. His work is in the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and the Alkazi Collection.

His works are unique and mostly small: tempera paintings, gouaches, watercolours and pen-and-ink drawings. Tempera and gouache can flake or rub, and paper fades and stains after years in sunlight, so condition needs a close look. Keep any gallery invoice, exhibition label or letter that shows where the work came from and when it was made.