Noted artist Ganesh Pyne's frenzied graph paper "jottings", juxtaposed with his contemporary Lalu Prasad Shaw's portraits of the quintessential Bengali babu, capture the creative impulse of the two masters who shaped the course of Bengal modernism through their art.
Both artists are "dimensionally opposite" despite being of the same age and having trained at the same Government Arts College in Kolkata according to Rakhi Sarkar who has curated an exhibition here of works by the duo.
33 artworks of Pyne, who died in 2013, along with 23 by the 78-year-old Lalu Prasad Shaw are displayed at the show titled, "Ganesh Pyne & Lalu Prasad Shaw: Two Faces of Bengal Modernism" brought by Kolkata-based CIMA Gallery to the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre in the city.
The horrors of the 1946 Calcutta riots to which Pyne was exposed as a child, come alive in his "wiry black lines and tearing scribbles that sear the paper with cross-hatchings, deletions and the repeated retracing of outlines."
According to critic Rita Datta, the artist's state of mind and his intellectual engagements can be visualised in these 'Jottings,' in the way "he notes down well-known or interesting quotations or pens his comments or reflections."
The chaotic intensity that Pyne's 'Jottings' scribbled with quotes by Russian film-maker Tarkovsky or a couplet by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in the margins, make it evident that they were "never meant for the public."
These jottings give the viewers an opportunity to snoop around the hitherto unreachable recesses of the artist's mind.
She points out the "intense, unscripted struggle" between the man and the artist, between his thoughts and feelings and their communicable expression.
"They reveal the very private niche in his mind where emotions, thoughts, memories flicker incipiently and gestate obsessively, seeking expression in imagery" says Datta.
Curator Sarkar says the formative years of the artists were instrumental in shaping the trajectory of their works.
While Shaw grew up in the rural country side in Bengal and came to Kolkata in his late teens. Pyne spent all his life in North Kolkata in a house with multiple corridors in the corners of which he would often find retreat.
Sarkar says, "The formative years of both the artists
shaped their works. The transition from the rural to the urban was quite dramatic for Lalu and some of his early works, he said were impacted by his initial days in Kolkata.
"Pyne on the other hand was driven by a very intense 'Bengali spirit' - the social and political culture of Kolkata that was totally different from the rest of India. And this Kolkata impacted him."
The two managed to be strikingly distinct despite using the same mediums to create their art.
"Both used tempera but very differently. Lalu's temperas are very direct, flat. They are opaque of course but luminescent. While Ganesh's works are multi-layered and dark. They were using the same medium but expressing differently," says Sarkar.
Both of them were "responding to modernity," but the distinction in the backgrounds that they hailed from is conspicuous in their works. Pyne is believed to have been hugely influenced by Abanindranath Tagore who was the father of modernism in India.
"His works were a little like Satyajit Ray and Tagore so he looked at modernism but he was opening out his mind through his work. This was the language that he had created.
"Wheras Lalu was much more subdued and he was more indigenous. These are the parallel forces that have always existed in Bengal - very strong indigenous current on one hand and then a kind of a westernised impact," Sarkar says.
Shaw, having grown up in the countryside and been mentored by the iconic landscape artist Gopal Ghose, it wouldn't have come as a surprise if he had taken to practice the art form himself.
However, the artist chose to leave behind "expressionist fervour" and was instead drawn to portraiture often becoming a "social observer."
Shaw's works exhibited at the 5-day-long show include figurative temperas in colour exuding a delicate period ambience - a Bengali babu clad in a Punjabi-dhoti sniffing a flower, a bespectacled man in his forties holding on to the leash of his pet dog as he smokes a cigarette among others.
Shaw reins in specific narratives evoked by the dress, manner and accouterments of his individual subjects and turns them into a "wry examination of types of class and culture."
"They are beautiful. There is this period ambience with lots of energy yet so very contemporary. It really speaks to us even now. He is a social observer in the way he looks at his subjects through their attire, surroundings, expressions and mannerism," says veteran actress Sharmila Tagore, who inaugurated the exhibition recently.
A collection of Shaw's earlier graphic works including lithos and etchings, are also part of the show.
"His graphics are masculine, architectonic, dynamic and act as a visual barometer to capture the raucous ever-changing pulsations of the city," says Datta.
The exhibition is set to continue till February 6.
