Important Notice

Ganesh Pyne's work is rooted in his childhood experiences. He grew up devouring fairy tales and folklore of "gods and goddesses, kings and heroes and strange ghosts" narrated by his grandmother. (Ella Datta, Ganesh Pyne: His Life and Times, Calcutta: Centre of International Modern Art, 1998, p. 22) These stories fed his imagination as a child and had a hold on his inner world well into adulthood. Their memories often manifest in his... Ganesh Pyne's work is rooted in his childhood experiences. He grew up devouring fairy tales and folklore of "gods and goddesses, kings and heroes and strange ghosts" narrated by his grandmother. (Ella Datta, Ganesh Pyne: His Life and Times, Calcutta: Centre of International Modern Art, 1998, p. 22) These stories fed his imagination as a child and had a hold on his inner world well into adulthood. Their memories often manifest in his paintings. "The architectural arabesque that was the family home, the strange-looking shadows cast by the listeners on the surrounding walls, the narrow lane... created the ambience of his grandmother's tales." (Sovon Som, An Enchanted Space: The Private World of Ganesh Pyne, Kolkata: Centre of International Modern Art, 2005, p. 13)

Pyne was also deeply shaped by the Kolkata of his formative years - a city that was riddled with political, social, and economic unrest at the time. During the communal riots of 1946, he and his family were temporarily sheltered at a medical college as large-scale violence and destruction engulfed the city. This experience devastated Pyne, as did the horrifying sights of the Partition that would follow within a year. "His visual metaphor of disjointed human limbs owes a lot to his almost daily viewing, mostly from his fabled window, such frequent transportation of dead bodies in hand-drawn carts." (Arun Ghose, Jottings as Paintings, New Delhi: Sanchit Art Publications, 2014, p. 6) Around this time, he also lost his father and grandmother - losses that would feed into Pyne's preoccupation with death and destruction and reflect throughout his oeuvre.

The present lot was painted in the early 1970s, by which time Pyne had already arrived at his signature style as well as his medium of choice - tempera. While he had primarily worked with watercolour and gouache earlier in his career, he switched to using tempera almost exclusively from the mid-1960s.

The change in medium also led to an evolution in his style. His paintings became more textured, which in turn strengthened the mysterious quality they exude. "When asked about these changes, he said that the medium demanded it... What Pyne never says but it is obvious in his work is that with the use of tempera, he has devised a style whereby he gives an enigmatic form to his melancholy interior world without screaming out loud about his personal sorrows and sense of loss." (Datta, p. 46)

Woman Sowing is notable within Pyne's oeuvre for how it "portrays fertility and growth of life, as opposed to death and decay. We see elements of contradictions, polarities and satire in almost every work by Pyne. This tempera is no different. The sapling that the woman carries, and the standalone form of the banana leaf, while representing fertility and life, both have skeletal forms that foreground a sense of polarity that is characteristic of Pyne's language." (Ella Datta, From The Shadows, New Delhi: Akar Prakar, 2020, online)

Ella Datta remarks of the woman in this painting, "against a background of mysterious shadows and decaying structures, she conveys elements of courage and hope." (Datta, online)

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