Important Notice

Numerous critics have observed how the artist shifted from the figurative to the abstract from the 1960s. Pran Nath Mago ("From the 1960s onwards, the figure disappears...."), Uma Prakash ("...figurative descriptions gave way to landscapes of the mind"), Ranjit Hoskote ("During this phase [late 1950s], he abandoned figuration altogether...."), and Richard Bartholomew ("....Ram Kumar is the only painter of that generation who has not returned to... Numerous critics have observed how the artist shifted from the figurative to the abstract from the 1960s. Pran Nath Mago ("From the 1960s onwards, the figure disappears...."), Uma Prakash ("...figurative descriptions gave way to landscapes of the mind"), Ranjit Hoskote ("During this phase [late 1950s], he abandoned figuration altogether...."), and Richard Bartholomew ("....Ram Kumar is the only painter of that generation who has not returned to figural painting after 1960"), have all observed this shift as a process of synthesis and refinement. Yet, the artist intermittently returned to figures and the tangible. The figures he created in succeeding decades appear as spectres from a bygone age, as seen in the current lot. The two figures in (b) can barely be recognised. Choppy, staccato strokes outline their silhouettes, and swathes of grey give them form and emphasise the space between them. In (a), the artist revisits the scene of Humayun's Tomb, composing his watercolour like a photograph, with two obscure figures posing in the foreground.

In a 1996 interview with Gagan Gill, he offered a cryptic explanation to such resurfacings: "Why some things appear in your work and others don't-is a mystery. Almost beyond your control. Sometime back, I did some paintings in which Humayun's tomb was present....I wonder if nostalgia doesn't work somewhere deeper in my paintings." (Gagan Gill, "The Artist at Work - An Interview with Ram Kumar", Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, pg. 192)

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