Important Notice

Ganesh Pyne's art is deeply personal and emerges from memories and images drawn from mythology, private dreams, and personal tragedies. At several points during his career, Pyne returned to the Mahabharata, which held a deep fascination for him. He has been quoted to have said, "There is no happiness in the Mahabharata." The present lot, a portrait of Draupadi, was part of the Mahabharata theme he painted in his later years. In his... Ganesh Pyne's art is deeply personal and emerges from memories and images drawn from mythology, private dreams, and personal tragedies. At several points during his career, Pyne returned to the Mahabharata, which held a deep fascination for him. He has been quoted to have said, "There is no happiness in the Mahabharata." The present lot, a portrait of Draupadi, was part of the Mahabharata theme he painted in his later years. In his unique interpretations of the epic, he focussed on the protagonists as well as peripheral characters. The paintings in this series are, "witness to a Modernist master's profound and uniquely moving engagement with this history of pain... His gaze is focussed on figures at the margins of heroic history, those whom epics mention but neglect: ... women such as Amba, Saubali, Duhsala, Chitrangada, Gandhari and Draupadi, the abjected Ekalavya, the lonely survivor Yuyutsu, the self-exiled advisor Vidura." (Supriya Chaudhuri, "Epic of Unhappiness," The Telegraph, 18 December 2010, online) The bright palette and frontal pose hint at folk art elements and present a variation on Pyne's typical play of darkness and shadow.

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