Ram Kumar

Acquired directly from the artist in his studio, circa 1977

New Delhi, Vadehra Art Gallery, Ram Kumar: A Retrospective, November - December 1993 

Ram Kumar: A Retrospective, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1993, illustration unpaginated 

Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, edited by G. Gill, Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, illustration p. 139

There are minor flex of pigment loss scattered throughout the surface of the canvas along with hairline craquelere that is most prominent in areas of thickly applied paint. There is frame rubbing along the edges of the canvas and small areas of discolouration only visible upon very close inspection. UV light: the painting has been previously restored and small scattered areas of retouching are visible throughout under ultra violet light.
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Painted in 1977, this untitled landscape is a resplendent example of the artist’s experimentation with abstraction following his travels to Simla, Ladakh, and later to Australia. In this work, the dramatic intensity of his early figurative paintings is retained in these canvases, executed in soft tones of blue, umber and green which have now acquired a kind of austere brilliance, a certain ascetic purity. 'Ram Kumar 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.' (R. Hoskote, Ram Kumar: Recent Works, SaffronArt & Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, May - July 2002, p. 6)

'There is a spatial quality in the recent painting (1970 onwards), a sense of flight, of movement, and there is an aerial perspective (sometimes a series of perspectives), and it seems that the painter is looking at landscape in a number of ways and from different angles and points of view. Everything from the past is there. There is movement and a kind of bird's-eye view of landscape. Wedges of land and expanses of water; demarcations of land as arid and fertile; febrile rock and luxuriant vegetation; sunlight and shade; moisture; mist. The actors have melted into thin air. So have the gorgeous palaces and the solemn temples - Sanjoli (Simla Hills), Banaras, Kashmir, Greece, Ranikhet.' (R. Bartholomew, 'The abstract as a pictorial proposition', Ram Kumar A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 30).