Important Notice

“Ram Kumar’s landscapes are orchestrated as a dynamic equilibrium of floating planes, triggered weights and directional vectors. We respond to these meditative frames precisely because they have moved from the perceptual to the conceptual, from semblance to structure” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Parts of a World: Reflections on the Art of Ram Kumar”, Ram Kumar, Saffronart and Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2002, p. 7).

In... “Ram Kumar’s landscapes are orchestrated as a dynamic equilibrium of floating planes, triggered weights and directional vectors. We respond to these meditative frames precisely because they have moved from the perceptual to the conceptual, from semblance to structure” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Parts of a World: Reflections on the Art of Ram Kumar”, Ram Kumar, Saffronart and Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2002, p. 7).

In the present lot, a large abstract landscape from the early 1980s representative of the zenith of the artist’s deconstructivist abstraction, Ram Kumar demonstrates his mastery of space and perspective. The influence of cubism is evident in the angular planes of colour from which this landscape has been constructed, as well as the sharp convergences and divides between them. Even the perspective in Kumar’s canvas appears disjointed – sometimes giving the illusion of a bird’s eye view, and other times, on approaching the work from a different angle, of a direct view of the horizon. Sharp, angular wedges of blue-green and brown land appear to heave and roll as the viewer’s eye moves across the surface, bestowing the canvas with a sense of movement or constant flux.

In this work, it is colour, in the juxtaposition of shades and subtleties of tone, rather than texture or form that communicates Kumar’s message to his viewers – a message that his fellow artist Jagdish Swaminathan explains poetically as ‘Refraction’. He 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” (On presenting Kumar with the Kalidas Samman in 1986, in Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 210).

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