Important Notice

Although Ram Kumar started out as a figurative artist depicting the alienated and marginalised with poignant sorrow, the figure slowly receded from the foreground making landscapes and cityscapes his principal subjects. The ability of the face to convey the full sweep of the human experience that drew Kumar to figuration-and which he used to imbue his works with melancholy-was sublimated into his abstract landscapes, instead of receding from his... Although Ram Kumar started out as a figurative artist depicting the alienated and marginalised with poignant sorrow, the figure slowly receded from the foreground making landscapes and cityscapes his principal subjects. The ability of the face to convey the full sweep of the human experience that drew Kumar to figuration-and which he used to imbue his works with melancholy-was sublimated into his abstract landscapes, instead of receding from his canvas along with the figures. His turn to abstraction enhanced the emotive power of his works by untethering them from the particulars of his historical moment. “Stripped of sentiment and freed from the burden of description, the landscape evolved into a grand metaphor, a crucible of meteorological energies, a dynamic equilibrium poised among tectonic forces of imperious majesty.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Poet of the Visionary Landscape”, Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 38)

In the present lot, Kumar eschews realistic representation to depict the landscape as a two-dimensional form with geological features presenting as broad swathes of colour. In his abstract works, colour becomes as important to composition as form. Kumar employs the impasto technique where he uses a palette knife to “build up” layers of paint. According to art critic Geeta Kapur, “Such a method of building up a painting obviates, more or less, the necessity of drawing. Ram Kumar does often start with a charcoal sketch on the canvas. But there need be no drawing once the actual process of painting begins because the linear effects emerge in and through the application of paint. The line in such a case is not calligraphic nor the outline of a form; it is the edge of a painted form.” (“Ram Kumar”, Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1978, p. 81)

Colour becomes the indispensable central focus of Kumar’s works, undergirding composition and creating an emotionally-charged sensory experience. “The variegated colours of these irregular planes are suggestive of tracts of sea and sand, of rocky mountains and flat fields, of barren, parched earth and fecund vegetation. It is left to colour and brush strokes to transmit the moods and sensations that the various topographical elements convey. Perhaps they even represent the more unseen but perceived elements in the phenomenal world-the warm sunshine, a cooling breeze, the dampness of mists or hot, gusty winds. Ochres, rusts, yellows, greens, mauves, and ultramarine blues are orchestrated together to produce complex colour symphonies, which induce alternate feelings of both movement and stillness.” (Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2016, p. 13)

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