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Lot Essay
Somnath Hore was born in 1921 in the village of Barama in Chittangong, and following a stint as a poster artist for the Communist Party of India, studied printmaking at the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta. Unsurprisingly, a majority of Hore’s works express his reactions to the major historical and sociopolitical events of the Twentieth Century that resulted in large-scale human suffering, particularly those in his native Bengal like the famine of 1940.
It was in the mid-1970s that Hore began to work on sculptures, translating the anguish expressed in his prints, drawings and cast paper pulp pieces into three dimensions with astonishing effect. Describing the artist’s unique casting technique and style of figuration, Pranabranjan Ray notes that “The armatures, air vents and escape pipes of the molten metal are arranged in such a manner as they form the skeletal structures of the figures with the bones, veins and all that. The sheets of thin metal over the torso and the head of the figure is, at the same time, like a skin covering the bones with no flesh intervening and a bandage covering the wounds. The ends of the metal sheets join in such a manner as it suggests a slashed-open skin or skins with marks or surgical operation or skins showing naked bones. They are like living apparitions from scenes of destruction walking down the corridors of a hospital after being attended to.” (P. Ray, Hore, New Delhi, pp. 8-9)
The present sculpture portrays a nursing animal evoking associations with birth and survival. Although most of Hore’s figural sculptures depict human bodies, this work adopts the figures of an animal and her young, perhaps observed by the artist in Santiniketan, to convey tenacity and perhaps even hope.
It was in the mid-1970s that Hore began to work on sculptures, translating the anguish expressed in his prints, drawings and cast paper pulp pieces into three dimensions with astonishing effect. Describing the artist’s unique casting technique and style of figuration, Pranabranjan Ray notes that “The armatures, air vents and escape pipes of the molten metal are arranged in such a manner as they form the skeletal structures of the figures with the bones, veins and all that. The sheets of thin metal over the torso and the head of the figure is, at the same time, like a skin covering the bones with no flesh intervening and a bandage covering the wounds. The ends of the metal sheets join in such a manner as it suggests a slashed-open skin or skins with marks or surgical operation or skins showing naked bones. They are like living apparitions from scenes of destruction walking down the corridors of a hospital after being attended to.” (P. Ray, Hore, New Delhi, pp. 8-9)
The present sculpture portrays a nursing animal evoking associations with birth and survival. Although most of Hore’s figural sculptures depict human bodies, this work adopts the figures of an animal and her young, perhaps observed by the artist in Santiniketan, to convey tenacity and perhaps even hope.