The fool, in control

Ganesh Pyne's deeply disturbing works are a commentary on life around us.

He's reticent to the point of being reclusive, and for many years that was just as true for Ganesh Pyne's works. Collectors in Calcutta (then) could still pick up his drawings, but even those who were familiar with the artist's works in Mumbai and Delhi had almost no access to his paintings.

If Pyne's work has not had as much visibility as his peers, it would be interesting to ask if this is account only of the artist's desire to keep a low profile, or the unsettling nature of his subjects.

Monkeys that grimace, people in pain, the telltale indications of poverty, and the sparseness in choice of colours, paint a grim reality on his canvases "" not what was popular in drawing rooms across the country in the seventies and eighties.

And by the nineties, Pyne was already a force to reckon with "" among the foremost painters in the country, if still creating stark images with a strong intellectual questioning that has always identified his work.

Born in 1937, Pyne's childhood was saturated with tales and fables from mythology, as told by his grandmother in their huge Kolkata mansion.

The years flew by, and next Pyne was to be found joining in on "addas" in Kolkata's smoky cafes, heatedly discussing communism and Picasso, followed by the expected family uproar when he opted to join the Government College of Art and Craft.

His early works weren't as insightful and grim as his later art. A short stint as animator and the influence of painters like Abanindranath Tagore, Hals Rembrandt and Paul Klee left their imprint on him, helping him to evolve two distinct features that can be seen in his temperas "" distortion and exaggeration.

The many facets of Pyne's life find reflection in his painting styles "" moving from painting misty mornings to altogether more disturbing images, at times even surreal, as he blended fantasy with free form. Still, his conviction was clear, and spoke through precise, bold and inventive imagery.

Pyne started with watercolours, turned to gouche, but has devoted the greater part of his life working on temperas. Even the form of tempera is classically his own, and with the shift in the 1960s, his figuration adapted to the grotesque outline of his subjects that has survived to this day.

Pyne's other passion is Indian cinema. Perhaps his farcical, ironic imagery is a reflection of popular cinema, or a cartoonist's deep insight into reality, but above all Pyne's paintings are a political narrator's grim reminder that is is the fool who is in control today.