Important Notice

The 1960s were a time of experimentation as artists delved deeper into their search for a national and personal identity through art. The monochromatic palette was explored by several artists, including Ram Kumar, who was during this time, also making a transition to abstract landscapes. Akbar Padamsee's exhibition of Greyworks in Mumbai in 1961 may have led to an added enthusiasm for this exploration. In 1961, Ram Kumar painted a similar... The 1960s were a time of experimentation as artists delved deeper into their search for a national and personal identity through art. The monochromatic palette was explored by several artists, including Ram Kumar, who was during this time, also making a transition to abstract landscapes. Akbar Padamsee's exhibition of Greyworks in Mumbai in 1961 may have led to an added enthusiasm for this exploration. In 1961, Ram Kumar painted a similar monochromatic work titled Greek Landscape, perhaps in homage to Padamsee's masterpiece with the same name. Between 1960 and 1964, Kumar continued to experiment with shades of grey, oscillating between pure and literary styles of abstraction. The present lot retains the remnants of figuration, as seen in the clearly decipherable buildings and what may be interpreted as a human face peering down on the scene, while veering towards the non-figurative landscape compositions that were to become the defining vocabulary of his later phase. As the "sternest and the most austere [period] in his career... colour and the complexity of imagery determined the mood of the painting." (Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 30) J Swaminathan wrote of this phase of Kumar's work: "He is able to transfer the unrelieved sadness of his male and female figures to the very tones of his colours, so that... he achieves an abstraction which oozes with a melancholy music, soft and gentle and remote, vaguely disturbing." (The artist, quoted in Gill, p. 76)

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