Ram Kumar

'Ram Kumar's Banaras landscapes lift one... into the timeless world of formless memories. What he paints now is not what the eye sees in the ancient city, it is rather the response of the soul to the visual impacts... In these canvases he resurrects the images which have distilled into the sub-conscious, acquiring an authenticity and incorruptibility not of immediate experience.' - Jagdish Swaminathan, 1961

(G. Gil (ed.), Ram Kumar - A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 73)

Painted in 1961, the present work dates to the year of Ram Kumar's historic visit to the holy city of Benaras (or Varanasi). Much is written of the career-defining shift that occurred in the artist's painterly style following this trip, and the current lot epitomizes the quiet beauty of these early landscapes.

The painting is exquisitely balanced, with the curious abstract forms, rendered in ochre, enveloped within a sea of rich teal. The painting captures the eerie nature of the artist's first night-time encounter in the city, and demonstrates the subtle brushwork and colour orchestration for which Ram Kumar is famed.

'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)