Ram Kumar

Christie's New York, 30 March 2006, lot 70

During this period, the forms within Ram Kumar’s paintings become condensed and deconstructed. By the time the artist painted this untitled work in 1993, the elements of his landscapes had been reduced to barely recognizable elements juxtaposed in shifting vertical and horizontal planes. The current work straddles the boundaries between abstraction and realism, depicting the landscape through layered and overlapping planes of brown, white, blue and maroon. The painting still echoes the sense of contemplation present in his early canvases, yet there is a vibrancy and lyricism that reveals perhaps a greater confidence in the artistic process itself.

“My work is now guided by a concern with plastic qualities. I am more deeply involved with the form than with content. When one is young and beginning, one's work is dominated by content, by ideas – but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself. I have grown detached – I want to find the same peace as mystics found...” 

- R. Kumar, 'Landscapes of the Mind' in G. Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 117