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Lot 8

 

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Ram Kumar went through several phases during his career, on his journey from the fi gurative to the abstract. From playing an important role in the drama of his paintings in the 1950s, the fi gure was to be completely eliminated from his works in the following decade, when he turned to landscapes which were to become bearers of the emotive in his art. In 1960, a trip to Varanasi, the city of death and rebirth, supplied Kumar with a new exposure... Ram Kumar went through several phases during his career, on his journey from the fi gurative to the abstract. From playing an important role in the drama of his paintings in the 1950s, the fi gure was to be completely eliminated from his works in the following decade, when he turned to landscapes which were to become bearers of the emotive in his art. In 1960, a trip to Varanasi, the city of death and rebirth, supplied Kumar with a new exposure to human suff ering that lay at the intersection of faith and torment. With this new turn, he sought to liberate reality from its human context. His early Benares works negotiate the built cityscape and the landscape with the occasional, but increasingly abstract depictions of built forms and the river. "Yet the greyish mist that enveloped the temple city apparently snaked its way into the landscape as well. It was as if the artist could not yet throw off its oppressive weight. Th e process had to be gradual. He would also continue to toggle between expressionism and abstraction, just as he would oscillate between the city and the landscape."(Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saff ronart, 2016, p.12)

The present lot, painted in 1961, is one of Kumar's earliest Benaras paintings, a subject which has become a defining theme in his oeuvre. Domes, spires and homes are still visible in the predominantly brown composition with the occasional patch of blue river. Richard Bartholomew says of this period, "The years from 1960-64 comprised a predominantly grey period, the sternest and the most austere in his career. Using the encaustic process Ram even delved into shades of black. Greys derived from blues and browns set off the facets of the textures, the drifts, the engulfed landforms, the isthmus shapes and the general theme of the fecund but desolate landscape." (Richard Bartholomew, "The Abstract Principle in the Paintings of Ram Kumar," Rati Bartholomew and Pablo Bartholomew eds., The Art Critic, Noida: BART, 2012, p. 539)

This sense of desolation is clearly visible in the present lot, with its thick, muddy, impasto. "Th e dextrous use of colour conveys the feeling of a dark and dank city swaddled in river mists and smoke. Th is Benaras as Kumar paints it is no city of joy, this is a city of the dead and the dying." (Menezes, pp. 11-12) It is a vision that is unique and quintessentially Kumar's.

"Benares is important for me both as an artist and as a human being, the first paintings came at a point when I wanted to develop elements in fi gurative painting and go beyond it, my first visit to the city invoked an emotional reaction as it had peculiar associations. But such romantic ideas were dispelled when I came face to face with reality. Th ere was so much pain and sorrow of humanity. As an artist it became a challenge to portray this agony and suffering, its intensity required the use of symbolic motifs, so my Benares is of a representative sort."
- RAM KUMAR

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