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Lot 78

 

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"An artist shows the entry point to his creative world and the rest depends on the onlooker, what he sees, feels and interprets. He has to make an effort to find for himself what he is seeking and what the artist wants him to see." - RAM KUMAR

Nature has always played a crucial role in Ram Kumar's artistic and spiritual journey. What began as an exploration of the sacred and profane in Benaras in 1960, continued to become a... "An artist shows the entry point to his creative world and the rest depends on the onlooker, what he sees, feels and interprets. He has to make an effort to find for himself what he is seeking and what the artist wants him to see." - RAM KUMAR

Nature has always played a crucial role in Ram Kumar's artistic and spiritual journey. What began as an exploration of the sacred and profane in Benaras in 1960, continued to become a lifelong introspective effort to find a sense of harmony within himself. Kumar's affinity for nature began in childhood, which he spent surrounded by the glorious Himalayan mountains in Simla. Nature, according to Nirmal Verma, "came both as a release from his past and a return to it... a nostalgic longing for a 'past' gone for ever. They also symbolised peace and inner security, as if by returning to them, one can salvage a spark of happiness from the ruins of one's adulthood... by 'abstracting' the image of mountains, he released them from the fixed memory of his childhood and thus eternalised them as something which is part of nature." (From Solitude to Salvation, Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 26)

Kumar's works following his trip to Benaras were a unique mixture of Cubism and abstraction. In the beginning, he preferred dark and muted colours, evoking an atmosphere of desolation and sullenness. This changed after a trip to Kashmir in the mid-1960s, giving way to a more cheerful palette and semi-representational forms - a penchant that continued even later, as seen in the present lot. Kumar's many travels over the decade changed his artistic vision. Soon, even architectonic elements began disappearing, replaced by a desire for pure abstraction. As seen in the present lot, "...he would look to nature for inspiration and transform his contemplation of the landscape into an irregular patchwork quilt of colour. There was no longer any attempt to portray a realistic representation of what he observed. Instead, the outer landscape would transform itself into the inner mindscape, which in turn would manifest itself on canvas and paper. The moods and sensations that were evoked in him by his meditation on the outer world would play out as colours and textures." (Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2016, pp. 12-13)

The present lot, a later abstract landscape by Ram Kumar, offers few clues to the identity of the location being portrayed. Like fellow artist S H Raza's interest in the emotive qualities of nature, Kumar too was more concerned with capturing the essence of the place rather than in realistic cityscapes. Critic Richard Bartholomew alludes to this intangible quality in Kumar's art: "When I see a Ram Kumar painting... I get the feeling that I've been there before... The very forms of the composition suggest that. The hard and the soft, the tangible and the elusive, the structure and the sensation... Ram's work draws us into its field of vision, involving us visually, stimulating us to see this detail or that... There is great depth, in perspective and feeling. The experience encountered is extremely refined. A reductive principle in composition and an immaculate technique determine the scale." (Richard Bartholomew, "Ram Kumar '73," Rati Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal and Rosalyn D'Mello eds., Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, New Delhi: Bart, 2012, p. 536) The present lot, with its focus on the language of painting, evokes just such a sense of place, without specifying what that place might be.

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