
When the artist
Ganesh Pyne (1937-2013) died in Kolkata on March 12, the newspapers and
television channels were full of praise for his prodigious painterly gifts. The
exercise was well-intentioned, but clichéd. It mainly revealed the obvious
about the artist.
Opinions were trotted
out about the influence of Abanindranath Tagore and his uncle Gaganendranath
and, of course, Rembrandt and Paul Klee. Rembrandt was mentioned because like
the 17th century Dutch master of realism, Pyne too p