Important Notice

M F Husain and Ram Kumar were among the fi rst generation of artists in post-independence India to incorporate Western aesthetics to carve a unique "Indian" identity in modern art. They struck a mutual friendship after meeting for the first time in 1953 and over the years, collaborated on several artistic endeavours, including group exhibitions. Kumar, who is best-known for his Varanasi (Benaras) paintings, visited the pilgrimage site for the... M F Husain and Ram Kumar were among the fi rst generation of artists in post-independence India to incorporate Western aesthetics to carve a unique "Indian" identity in modern art. They struck a mutual friendship after meeting for the first time in 1953 and over the years, collaborated on several artistic endeavours, including group exhibitions. Kumar, who is best-known for his Varanasi (Benaras) paintings, visited the pilgrimage site for the first time with Husain.

The present lot is a portrait of Ram Kumar, painted by Husain as an homage to his compatriot and friend Kumar, who was unable to attend a joint exhibition of the two artists in Prague. They had participated in a joint exhibition in Delhi earlier that same year.

In a nod to the artist, Husain painted the present lot in the early figurative style of Kumar, who, until the mid-1960s, painted human subjects, whose lost expressions invoked a deliberate pathos that conveyed his own despairing views on the human condition. According to critic Nirmal Verma, in Kumar's early works, "The forlorn figures huddled in the foreground not only appear to be estranged from their environment, but what is more disturbing, they seem to be strangers to one another... If Ram Kumar's figures look so bereft, it is because they are bereft of all emotions, entirely de-emotionalised; frozen in their immobility they freeze us from within... With all his stylization one can recognise the human contours of the bodies, their gaunt faces and staring eyes, they even have a certain kind of wan beauty." (Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 22)

Adopting a similar aesthetic, Husain painted a stoic-faced Kumar in the foreground, posed with folded arms, dressed in a suit - a stance very similar to some of Kumar's own depictions of male forms during the mid-to late 1950s.

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