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Lot 81

 

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Ram Kumar’s works from the late 1960s and early 1970s are representative of the very beginnings of his deconstructionist abstraction. Turning away from his focus on the city of Varanasi and its teetering riverbank architecture, the artist turned to the landscape in its most pristine form, unrecognizable in terms of geography or location. In these large canvases, with their fractured planes and multiple perspectives, Kumar moves beyond the human... Ram Kumar’s works from the late 1960s and early 1970s are representative of the very beginnings of his deconstructionist abstraction. Turning away from his focus on the city of Varanasi and its teetering riverbank architecture, the artist turned to the landscape in its most pristine form, unrecognizable in terms of geography or location. In these large canvases, with their fractured planes and multiple perspectives, Kumar moves beyond the human figure and its habitations to express as simply as possible the wildness and solitude of the natural environs he encountered during his youth, spent in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Speaking of this shift away from man and the man-made in his work, the artist explains, “…perhaps a human face or a recognizable image shuts all doors to an observer as far as the basic essence of a work of art is concerned. Only the superficial image remains on the surface which has very little to do with art. As in classical music words are insignificant. In art image is distraction” (as quoted in “From Ram Kumar’s Notebooks”, Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 201).

In the present lot, it is the juxtaposition of shades and the subtleties of tone, rather than form or texture that communicate the artist’s message to his viewers. Through this communication, which fellow artist Jagdish Swaminathan poetically terms ‘Refraction’, a process of self-discovery is initiated. Swaminathan elaborates, “It does not make you seek, it makes you wonder…A refraction which makes you realize the reality of the mundane, the familiar, and in consequence, makes you real. You stand revealed to yourself, alone, in the living mirage of the world” (from his 1986 speech on presenting Kumar with the Kalidas Samman, quoted in Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 210).

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