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Somnath Hore (1921 - 2006)
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Lot 26
Somnath Hore (1921 - 2006)
Estimate : 35,00,000 - 55,00,000

"At the Nehru Centre, London, in June 1995, as I opened the crate that was to have brought a bronze work by Somnath Hore, I gasped. It was a tangle of metal scrap. Sighing, I asked a colleague to finish the unpacking. An hour later, as I saw the opened object now placed on a pedestal, I gasped again. Tagore was looking at me, in the perfection of his indefinable intensity and inner calm, his hollowed eyes a showing pain and – an understanding of that pain. The truest Tagore head ever made in the foundry of the truth of art".


- Gopalkrishna Gandhi


This lot by Somnath Hore is a miniature portrait bust of the famed Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore who was also Hore’s mentor (Hore, a Bengali printmaker and sculptor headed the Graphics Department at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan that was founded by Tagore). Hore made around 4 such portraits of Tagore, one of which was auctioned by the Bombay-based Saffronart in 2014, and another of which is a part of the collection of The Nehru Centre, London (it was gifted to the institution by the Government of West Bengal in the 1990s). The bronze portrait bust is a rare piece as Hore hardly ever created portraits—consumed as he was by Socialist, Communist concerns in his life and art. The work however, is reflective of his style and singular sculptural language that he developed as a result of his experiences and impressions of the Bengal Famine, Tebhaga movement, Vietnam War and the general state of anguish and suffering of the masses (i.e., their “wounds.”) In all probability, it was cast using the lost-wax process. According to Arun Ghose, Hore 


took up wax to model his pieces instead of the usual clay and relied mostly on finger-pressure to obtain the desired shapes…His technique, however, did not allow his modelled pieces done in wax to be cast in the traditional casting method, in which the plaster-mould is taken to allow multiple casting. Somnath’s pieces had to be cast in the lost-wax process and thus each of his pieces is unique…What was, and still is, of interest is to note the way he played with the surface of his figures…He played with wax slabs of various sizes to derive…textural quality in his sculptures.


It is also interesting to note that Hore was a printmaker first, before he decided to venture into sculpture.



Hammer Price :
38,00,000
+ Buyer premium (0 %)
 0.00
Total
38,00,000
The lot has ended
  • Collection: Oleographs, Lithographs, woodcut prints, etching, and screen- and offset prints Collection: Oleographs, Lithographs, woodcut prints, etching, and screen- and offset prints
Description

"At the Nehru Centre, London, in June 1995, as I opened the crate that was to have brought a bronze work by Somnath Hore, I gasped. It was a tangle of metal scrap. Sighing, I asked a colleague to finish the unpacking. An hour later, as I saw the opened object now placed on a pedestal, I gasped again. Tagore was looking at me, in the perfection of his indefinable intensity and inner calm, his hollowed eyes a showing pain and – an understanding of that pain. The truest Tagore head ever made in the foundry of the truth of art".


- Gopalkrishna Gandhi


This lot by Somnath Hore is a miniature portrait bust of the famed Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore who was also Hore’s mentor (Hore, a Bengali printmaker and sculptor headed the Graphics Department at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan that was founded by Tagore). Hore made around 4 such portraits of Tagore, one of which was auctioned by the Bombay-based Saffronart in 2014, and another of which is a part of the collection of The Nehru Centre, London (it was gifted to the institution by the Government of West Bengal in the 1990s). The bronze portrait bust is a rare piece as Hore hardly ever created portraits—consumed as he was by Socialist, Communist concerns in his life and art. The work however, is reflective of his style and singular sculptural language that he developed as a result of his experiences and impressions of the Bengal Famine, Tebhaga movement, Vietnam War and the general state of anguish and suffering of the masses (i.e., their “wounds.”) In all probability, it was cast using the lost-wax process. According to Arun Ghose, Hore 


took up wax to model his pieces instead of the usual clay and relied mostly on finger-pressure to obtain the desired shapes…His technique, however, did not allow his modelled pieces done in wax to be cast in the traditional casting method, in which the plaster-mould is taken to allow multiple casting. Somnath’s pieces had to be cast in the lost-wax process and thus each of his pieces is unique…What was, and still is, of interest is to note the way he played with the surface of his figures…He played with wax slabs of various sizes to derive…textural quality in his sculptures.


It is also interesting to note that Hore was a printmaker first, before he decided to venture into sculpture.



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It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

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