E-Booklet of Somnath Hore

Curated by K S RadhaKRiShnan

Somnath Hore

“I have never been able to make beautiful artefacts
in the usual sense. When someone wants to know my
bio-data, I have to point towards these artefacts. I
presume the viewers will react in their own personal
ways to find a bio-data.”
Somnath Hore (1921-2006)

One of the great multi-faceted artists of the 20th
century, Somnath Hore was remarkable for the
consistency and intensity with which he explored
human suffering via numerous techniques of
printmaking and bronze sculptures.


Born on 13 April 1921, in a village called Barama in
Chittagong district (now Bangladesh), Somnath Hore
lost his father when he was 13, saw his mother struggle
to bring up her family, and, as a young man, witnessed
the havoc wrought
on Chittagong by
Japanese bombing
in World War II.
But the event that
haunted Hore’s
political concerns
and art practice
all his life was the
devastating Bengal
Ratey Khuli Baithak, 1946, Woodcut on Nepalese hand- Famine of 1943,
made paper, 16.5 x 20.5 cm | Collection: The Savara
Foundation for the Arts - New Delhi, India which brought
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about the deaths of 2.1-3 million people. Working for
the Communist Party, he was also deeply impressed
by the organised protests of the sharecroppers in the
Tebhaga movement (1946) and of tea garden workers
(1947).

The young artist-activist sketched
and made posters to document
and disseminate information
about these events, record the
mass suffering he saw, and spread
the vision of an equitable socialist
society. From 1945, he studied at
the Government College of Art
in Calcutta and developed an
interested in woodcuts and wood
engravings. In 1953, he became a teacher at the Indian
College of Art in Calcutta.

In 1958, Hore joined the Government College of Art
in Delhi, where he took charge of the printmaking
department. The period
that followed saw a striking
expansion of his creative
horizons as he explored
techniques like etchings,
dry point, aquatint, and
colour intaglio. Though
the artist had drifted away
Genesis,1959, Intaglio, 28 x 33 cm
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from the Communist Party, his concerns regarding
exploitation, injustice and suffering remained a steady
theme in his work.

In 1967, Hore left Delhi, feeling stifled by its “success-
oriented attitude”. In 1968, he took charge of
the printmaking department at Kala Bhavana in
Santiniketan, where spent the rest of his life.

By his own admission, the presence of the masters
Benodebehari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij was a
crucial influence on Somnath Hore. In them, he found
a template for a committed art practice, away from
the spotlight or patronage networks of commercial
art, freely exploring techniques and refining his
creative vision. He now turned to yet other mediums
of expression, such as colour lithography and copper
engravings. In 1970, he embarked on his famous series
of white-on-white prints – made using paper pulp
and wax sheets that
he slashed, lacerated
and bruised – which he
called ‘Wounds’. Over
the years, his work had
steadily gained the
quality of abstraction,
but with ‘Wounds’ it was
as if he had moved on Somnath Hore with Sukhamoy Mitra, Ramkinkar
from depicting figures Baij, A. Ramachandran, K. G. Subramanyan,
Dinkar Kowshik and Benode Behari Mukherjee
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as objects of suffering and was
now making himself and his
viewers partake of the suffering
itself.

In 1974, Somnath Hore started
experimenting with pieces of
wax thrown away by students of
sculpture at Kala Bhawan. They
helped him cast the pieces in
bronze, and a new chapter in the Photograph: Asit Poddar
artist’s life was inaugurated. In 1975, he made a 3-feet
high depiction of Mother with Child, a tribute to the
courage shown by Vietnam against the military might
of the USA. This sculpture was stolen and never found
again. The shock made him give up sculpting for a
while. Eventually, he started casting small pieces, the
size of his hands, which he simply called “bronzes”. He
was, as art historian R. Siva Kumar says, “condensing
the suffering of a lifetime into his small figures”.













Goat, Bronze
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Somnath Hore at his studio, Lal Bandh Somnath Hore with Reba Hore



ƒ Mother and Child (Vietnam series),
1975, Bronze, 3’ 6” height (approx)
Photograph: Janak Jhankar

Somnath Hore retired
from Kala Bhavana in
1983. He pursued work
on his bronzes from
his home in Lalbandh,
Santiniketan, where he
lived with his artist wife
Reba and daughter
Chandana. He died in
2006. In 2007, he was
awarded the Padma
Bhushan, the third
highest civilian award
in India.
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Mother and Child, Bronze
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“Most of Somnath’s sculptures are small
and were made to the scale of his hands.
The modelling of the face, the hunched
back, the folds and axial shifts of the body,
everything carried the imprint of the artist’s
forming and transforming hands. Turning his
bronzes in our hands or running our hands
over them, we become aware that they have
been designed to fit our intimate tactile
world. The visual metamorphosis of the
punched holes, the slit surfaces, the torn
edges, the marks left by molten wax, and
the rugged channels technically required
for casting, into empty eyes and wordless
mouths, into torn and scalded skin, into
mangled bodies, exposed bones and
misshaped limbs are also most convincing
at this scale. It is the scale at which the
materials and his sculptural process worked
most effectively, and that explains why the
enlargements of his sculptures have not
worked. Though technique is crucial to his
vision, he did not use skill like a craftsman.
His virtuosity was never demonstrative; in
his hands, materials, techniques and skill
simply became the natural language of
consummate art.”


Prof. R Siva Kumar, Art Historian and Writer
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Curator’s Note

The year 2020, which has gone down in history as
the year of the Covid pandemic and social isolation,
became for me a year of connections and productivity
thanks to the man I called “Somnath da”. Though I was
not formally a student of Somnath Hore, from my early
student years in Kala Bhavana, I was given the precious
gift of a lifelong and close bond with him. Back in the
1970s, I worked in a studio which was right below
his own studio space, and our regular chats under
the Bakul tree nearby revealed to me the profoundly
emotional man behind the now-legendary artist.
Later, in my frequent
visits to Santiniketan,
I met him and was
privileged to witness
his deep involvement
with his work coupled
with his complete
disregard for his own
achievements and
status as an artist. Somnath Hore at his studio, Lal Bandh, Santiniketan

In curating the work of the Santiniketan masters, one
comes across a challenge that is, paradoxically, rooted
in their immensely beautiful way of life. Nandalal
Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, Somnath Hore... these artists
did not think of their work as a finished ‘product’ with

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commercial ‘value’. They
gifted away much of their
work to students and friends.
There was no photographic
documentation of such
gifts. Thus, simply locating
and documenting Somnath
Hore’s works itself became Thrashing Grain, Early 1950s, Wood
a crucial act of curation. engraving, 16.2 x 21.3 cm

Thankfully, examples of his printmaking were relatively
easy to access since multiple prints had been made
of each work. I spent the year contacting galleries,
collectors, Somnath da’s old friends and students...
who then led me to yet other people. I am especially
happy at having
unearthed some of his
old woodcut prints and
his Tebhaga movement
work from the 1940s,
and his unexpectedly
colourful lithography
prints after joining
Early 1950s, Woodcut, 6.5 x 16.5 cm Santiniketan.

However, in the case of his bronze sculptures, each
piece was unique. The work is scattered mostly among
private collectors (but no actual sculpture is available
for acquisition). In this case, the curation became a

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bit like patiently churning an ocean and waiting to be
rewarded with a result!


According to my best
estimate, Somnath Hore
may have made around 164
bronzes. Of these I was able
to collect photographic
documentation of nearly
120 pieces – and publish
these in a book – which
gives me a tremendous
Cry of the Molested (Rape at Itbhata),
1994, Bronze, 22 x 23 x 29 cm sense of satisfaction.
This exhibition puts together Somnath Hore’s work (or
photographic documentation of his work) across all
the mediums he worked in and across all the decades
of his creative life. It is a tribute to his extraordinarily
empathetic and emotional nature, which witnessed
the Second world
war, the Bengal
famine, the quiet
suffering of the
peasants, workers
and destitute whom
he documented...
and made their pain
the mainstay of his
art forever. 1978, Lithograph, 26.5 x 39.5 cm

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Pavement, Bronze
The form as well as content of his art kept changing
but the pain remained constant, even deepened, and
found newer modes of expression. On the one hand,
there is no stagnation at all in his creative arc: he is
constantly evolving from an activist’s propaganda-
oriented woodcuts to explorations of etching, colour
intaglio or lithography, and eventually to abstract
paper-pulp prints and bronze sculptures. But, at the
same time, there is never a rupture in his theme and
his emotional concerns. He will never forget, nor let us
forget, that this world stands on the starved hollowed
bodies, the bowed backs, the empty eyes of those
whose humanity is denied to them.


I am deeply grateful to Naveen Kishore of Seagull
Books for his encouragement and for generously
sharing Somnath Hore’s text and artwork originally
published by Seagull.


This note will not be complete without recognising
the invaluable contribution of Takshila Education

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Somnath Hore with Mill Call by Ramkinkar Baij, 1982 | Photograph: Samiran Nandy
Society in setting up Arthshila as a public art centre
in Santiniketan, facilitating this exhibition on the
occasion of Somnath Hore’s 100th birth anniversary,
and producing the commemorative volume that
publishes all the documentation that we have done
of his work. The Takshila philosophy, which envisages
museums as welcoming spaces for laypersons – and
not forbidding elitist repositories of objects of art – is
a heartening intervention in the world of art. Takshila
is setting up such public museum spaces in Delhi,
Patna, and Ahmedabad – where this exhibition will be
travelling in the coming months.

KS Radhakrishnan
Sculptor and curator
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“I am somewhat apprehensive about
calling these works sculpture.
They have no weight, no substance
and no dimensions: all they have is
the aspect of wounds. However, the
wind can pass freely through the
figures. I find it comfortable to just
call them bronzes. They are small in
size because they are the result of ten
fingers working on sheets of wax.”
Somnath Hore













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Wounds - 105, 1972, Engraving, 17.5 x 27.6 cm
“The suffering which Somnath Hore related to so
intensely all his life is depicted in recumbent, horizontal
figures. People lying down, often just sleeping on
streets, almost like dead bodies. This horizontality is a
powerful statement, as if, pushed and flattened down
by the system, the people are unable to stand up for
themselves.

However, simultaneously, all of the humanity within
Somnath Hore is reaching out and making an attempt
to make these people stand. He wants them, so to say,
standing on their own feet!

I feel this desire found its fruition in his sculpture, in
which he converted a technical aspect of sculpting that
we call ‘channels’ (which are channels for the molten
metal, which we cut away from the final figure), he
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converted these channels
into legs for his figures, as
if giving them a chance to
get up.

I feel he experienced a
moral responsibility to lift
his otherwise recumbent
human figures.

Depicting what their ‘lying
on the ground’ suggested,
as well as trying to giving
them a way to ‘get up’, Seated Woman, Bronze, 17 x 15.5 x 13.5 cm
both were part of his art and his method. The artist
was extending a hand to the subjects of his lifelong,
consistent, intensely felt concerns.”


KS Radhakrishnan







What I draw is the unfolding of my being
which in my
case is inscribed as ‘wounds’...

Somnath Hore



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Somnath Hore at work | Photograph: Sunil K Dutt



“With his work on Wounds,
Somnath Hore moved on from
depicting human or animal
figures as objects of suffering
and was now making himself,
and us, participate in the
suffering itself. We were face
to face with the wound – where
would we turn away now?”

Juhi Saklani
Writer and Editor


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“Somnath Hore was more
than an artist. He was
a witness of the human
drama, but a witness with
a skill that translated his
witnessing into art.”


“Somnathbabu was at the
door to meet me, standing
tall like a Painted Stork on
stilt-like legs, stooped and
lost to thought... As he
asked me to take a seat,
I was struck by his fingers —
unusually long and, strangely,
as thoughtful as their owner.
They moulded the air while
he spoke.”

Gopal Krishna Gandhi
Writer and Bureaucrat




Fisherwoman, 1994, Bronze, 36 x 13 x 8 cm

“During the final years of his life... as if in a final act of
empathy, he came to resemble his own sculptures of
wounded and suffering men.”


Prof. R Siva Kumar, Art Historian and Writer







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Mother and Child

“It was in 1975, and I was in my second year of college,
when Somnath Hore made his first ever sculpture. He
started work on a nearly 3-foot sculpture, which is not
an easy thing to do.

The Vietnam war had
gone on for many years
and was nearing its end
in 1975. The sculpture was
a depiction of a mother
and child. For him, the
suffering and victimhood
of Vietnam were visualised
in the form of this baby
clinging to its mother. You
can see her body as an
assemblage of fragments,
her hollow elongated arms
are not fully enclosed, you
can see into her body. You
can not just see but feel a
tormented and destroyed
human being, inside out. Mother and Child (Detail), mid-1970s, Bronze

He was quite happy with it, after all it was his first
effort. He kept it outside Kala Bhavana for patination.
And the next morning, when he came to see it, it
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was missing. It was
extremely shocking.
The police came but
that piece was never
found.

How painful it was
for that sensitive
artist! The loss of his
first attempt, a work
in which so much
emotion had been
invested, and that
too from a place, Kala
Bhavana campus,
that was home to
him. The trauma of
someone entering
your deeply private Mother and Child (Vietnam series), mid-1970s
space of creativity and Bronze, 3’ 6” height (approx)
emotion and snatching something away violently. It
was an unhealing wound. Deeply hurt, and caught up
in a turmoil of loss, anger, humiliation, he refused to
sculpt. It was a kind of enraged protest. He actually
never embarked on a sculpture of that scale again in
his life.”


K.S. Radhakrishnan


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Portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, 1994, Bronze