Ram Kumar

Rendered in striking monochrome and guided by a complex articulation of space and form, the current lot illustrates Ram Kumar's quiet prowess of his craft. The painting relates to the artist's famed depictions of Varanasi, in which the holy city is compressed into a cubist amalgam of shape and line. The composition likewise exhibits the lyrical, more expressive quality which was to define Ram Kumar's work from the end of the 1960s onwards. Executed in neutral tones of white, gray and black, the work is marked by its bold interplay of positive and negative space, light and shadow, which lends the work a certain austere beauty.

"Every sight was like a new composition... It was not merely outward appearances which were fascinating but they were vibrant with an inner life of their own, very deep and profound, which left an everlasting impression on my artistic sensibility. I could feel a new visual language emerging from the depths of an experience."

- Ram Kumar

(G. Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 89)