Important Notice

The Calcutta of Ganesh Pyne's childhood saw an onslaught of disasters, with political unrest and a devastating famine in the early 1940s, communal riots in 1946, and then the violence that accompanied the Partition of India a year later, all of which left the city battered and agitated. The scenes of despair and darkness that the artist remembers from his childhood have left an unmistakable mark on his artistic sensibility, and the forms and... The Calcutta of Ganesh Pyne's childhood saw an onslaught of disasters, with political unrest and a devastating famine in the early 1940s, communal riots in 1946, and then the violence that accompanied the Partition of India a year later, all of which left the city battered and agitated. The scenes of despair and darkness that the artist remembers from his childhood have left an unmistakable mark on his artistic sensibility, and the forms and palette he has adopted in his work.

Pyne recalls, "I will never forget my first brush with death. It was 1946, and communal riots were taking place all over Calcutta. My family had been evacuated from our 19th century mansion. One day, while walking about, I stumbled upon a handcart heaped with dead bodies, being wheeled into a morgue. On the top of the pile lay the body of an old woman - stark naked, her body had turned ashen. There were fresh wounds on her breast that were oozing blood and there was shining necklace around her neck. I was shaken by the sight. Since then, I have been obsessed with the dark world" (Mitra Banerjee, Interview: Ganesh Pyne, Saffronart website, accessed August 2012).

Additionally, Pyne's childhood was punctuated with a series of personal losses, including the deaths of his father and grandmother, and also the pervasive sense of loss that came from growing up in a metropolis shrouded in an atmosphere of decay. These, along with his early encounters with human tragedy on a horrifying scale, deeply affected the artist and continue to influence his visual vocabulary today.

Rag dolls, puppets, clowns, and masked toys make repeated appearances in Pyne's work. Placed alongside skulls, detached limbs, and disintegrating flesh, Pyne's toys perhaps represent a 'safe-space' within the gloomy shadows and haunting images of death in his compositions. In his 1853 essay "The Philosophy of Toys", Charles Baudelaire explains melancholia in terms of a child's relationship with his toys, noting, "He [the child] twists and turns the toy, scratches it, shakes it, bangs it against the wall, hurls it on the ground...finally he prises it open, for he is the stronger party. But where is the soul? This is the beginning of melancholy and gloom" (Idris Parry ed., Essays on Dolls, Syrens, London, 1994, p. 14).

In the present lot, two masked shadowy forms, one holding a toy mask and the other donning a skull-mask, are shown sitting across each other, seemingly deep in conversation, on a bench into which they almost merge. 'Death' and 'childhood' are both located within the metaphor of the mask in this shared atmosphere of void. Despite its surreal construction, Pyne's canvas illustrates an inner sadness that is unabashedly real. It is the simultaneous expression of childhood melancholia and adult doubt that bestows this painting with a unique sense of sadness; one which is both naive and rationalized.

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