The Reclusive Master - A short story on renowned painter Ganesh Pyne, in Kolkata

From the archive record

Among the names that dominated Sotheby's auction of contemporary Indian art which concluded recently in New York was the renowned painter Ganesh Pyne. The diminutive artist from Kolkata stole the show with his painstaking intimate work on the tempera medium finds two paintings on paper went for $20,000 each. A price which was 6 times the estimated high-end value. The foremost exponent of Bengal School of Art Ganesh Pyne has blended romanticism, fantasy and inventive play of light and dark in his works wherein the labyrinths of the subconscious have formulated the imagery of his paintings. His own experiences of pain, solitude, alienation, horror shaped up his signature style. Ganesh Pyne is obsessed with death. He can't forget his first brush with death, in the summer of 1946, when communa