Ganesh Pyne's sketchbooks: Musings of an artist

In 2023, AstaGuru had auctioned Ganesh Pyne’s sketch book, an important offering of personal memorabilia. Pyne, one of the most notable contemporary artists of the Bengal School of Art, had developed his own style of ‘poetic surrealism’. These included themes of Bengali folklore and mythology.

The auctioned lot included two sets of sketchbooks. These had sketches that Pyne had made while travelling through Agra, Kashmir and Amritsar, and were dated between 1958 and 1960.

Pyne’s artistic career spanned several decades. His abstract and surrealist paintings started with watercolours and later evolved to gouache and tempera. The sketches that were auctioned were made with ink and wash, pencil, pen and pastel on paper.