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Lot 55

 

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Born in 1924, Ram Kumar is a trained economist and published writer in addition to being one of India’s most respected modern painters. Initially expressing himself through a figurative idiom and then a largely architectonic one, the artist turned to complete abstraction in the late 1960s. Kumar’s abstract works, albeit drained of human and architectural forms, are firmly rooted in his experiences of nature, particularly those of his youth in... Born in 1924, Ram Kumar is a trained economist and published writer in addition to being one of India’s most respected modern painters. Initially expressing himself through a figurative idiom and then a largely architectonic one, the artist turned to complete abstraction in the late 1960s. Kumar’s abstract works, albeit drained of human and architectural forms, are firmly rooted in his experiences of nature, particularly those of his youth in the foothills of the Himalayas. “With all the transcendental lyricism of his recent landscapes, Ram Kumar has never been attracted to the unearthy or other-worldly, his feet have always been planted in the terra firma, the palpable reality of the world. His ‘abstractions’ are not flights into the ‘unknown’, but like a shifting beam of light they move, passing through the entire space of the painting, from one segment of reality to another, uncovering the hidden relations, between the sky, the rock, the river. The sacred resides not in the objects depicted, but in the relations discovered” (Nirmal Verma, From Solitude to Salvation, Ram Kumar – A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 27).

In Nature’s beauty and eternity, Kumar seems to have discovered a vehicle with which he can engage with the hand of creation. “The true subject of Ram Kumar’s art, perhaps, is the landscape as Beloved. In responding to the palpable eroticism of graze and blur, the stippling and studding of textures across these painted surfaces, we share his manifest rapture, his sense of stepping outside himself to attain communion with the Beloved” (Ranjit Hoskote, Parts of a World: Reflections on the Art of Ram Kumar, Ram Kumar: Recent Works, Saffronart and Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2002, p. 9).

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