Ram Kumar (b. 1924)

Areas of exposed canvas visible along edges of painting. Overall good condition. Colours similar to catalogue illustration.
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During the late 1950s Ram Kumar moved away from the figurative works that are characteristic of his early phase of oil painting, and by the mid 60s his landscapes had become completely devoid of figures.  The current untitled work from the 1970s is a large-scale example of this abstracted form. Bold diagonals and layered planes of muted colors are characteristic of this period, features that remain integral to the visual vocabulary of the artist even today.  In this work, Ram Kumar's landscape straddles the boundaries between abstraction and realism, and the colors and complexity of various geometric elements within the composition determines the overall mood of the painting.

'In the 1960s and 70s there is a radical shift in Ram Kumar's work, the paintings continue to be austere and anguished but they cease to include human figures.  It is as if he decides to give up on man and his social fate, and tries to find his own solitary path towards vision.  The quest is hard and long.  In the citylandscapes he paints over these two decades, empty houses, which seem to collide with each other, are scratched out of black restless lines on brown and grey backgrounds.  There is no sky to lighten the melancholy and no trees to break the monotony of stone and earth.  Even Varanasi, which he paints obssessively, is not a city of pilgrims, priests, temples and lights, but a city which is slowly sinking into primeaval mud.' (Alok  Bhalla, Introductory Essay, The Sea and Other Stories by Ram Kumar, Shimla, 1997, p. xv). 

The artist, 'addressed himself to the formal aberrations of mismatched planes, jamming the horizontal perspective against top views inspired by site-mapping and aerial photography, and locking the muddy, impasto-built riverbank constructions into a Cubist geometrical analysis. Gradually, the architecture drained away from his canvasses: society itself passed from his concerns, until, during the late 1960's, his paintings assumed the character of abstractionist hymns to nature.' (Ranjit Hoskote, Ram Kumar, Recent Works, Saffron & Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, May - July 2002, p. 6).