| Medium | : | Ink |
|---|---|---|
| Height | : | 8.5 inch / 21.6 cm |
| Width | : | 11.5 inch / 29.2 cm |
| Dimension | : | W: 29.2 cm × H: 21.6 cm |
This artwork by Somnath Hore, created in 1967, is from his renowned “Wounds” series and is executed in pen and ink on paper. The work is a deeply moving expression of human suffering, inspired by the artist’s encounters with historical tragedies such as the Bengal Famine and social movements of the time.
₹175,000.00
Somnath Hore | Wounds | Pen & Ink on Paper | 8.5 x 11.5 inches | 1967
This artwork by Somnath Hore, created in 1967, is from his renowned “Wounds” series and is executed in pen and ink on paper. The work is a deeply moving expression of human suffering, inspired by the artist’s encounters with historical tragedies such as the Bengal Famine and social movements of the time. Hore employs an economy of line, using minimal strokes, abstracted forms, and subtle ink shading to create shapes that resemble both human figures and open scars, evoking a sense of silence, fragility, and pain. The vertical lines and hatching marks suggest bruises and wounds, yet the restraint and starkness of the composition heighten its emotional impact. Stripped of ornamentation, the drawing reflects Hore’s humanist vision, where absence and emptiness speak as strongly as presence. As part of his “Wounds” series, this piece stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit while powerfully documenting the scars left behind by collective trauma.
Somnath hore was the quintessential bengal artist deeply affected by the cataclysms that changed its history, such as the 1943 famine. a man-made crisis resulting in the death of two-three million people and the 1946 tebhaga peasant uprising.
A multifaceted artist who spent a lifetime exploring human suffering through his sketches, prints and sculptures, Somnath Hore was born in Chittagong in present-day Bangladesh in 1921.
Studying briefly at Government School of Art, Calcutta, in the mid-1940s, Hore trained under Zainul Abedin, and, later, under printmaker Saifuddin Ahmed. A participatory practice with fellow artists like Chittaprosad led to his intellectual growth. Hore’s early sketches were published in Janayuddha and People’s War, publications of the Communist Party; like many young men in the 1940s, Hore too joined the political party though he drifted away from it later.
Hore chose a distinctly formal, Western style of artmaking, distinguished by its strong linear quality, and guided by humanist concerns that foregrounded the indigent grappling with issues of survival. Distilled into iconic heads and emaciated bodies, his act of recovering the erased re-inscribed them into public memory. The anguished human form was reflected in Hore’s figuration through bold, minimal strokes enhanced by rough surfaces, slits and holes.
Over a thirty-year teaching career, Hore set up the printmaking department of Delhi Polytechnic in 1958. He joined Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, as head of its printmaking department in 1968, where his own practice received a boost under the guidance of Ramkinkar Baij and Benodebehari Mukherjee.
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