Important Notice

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).

Apart from their representation of fertile and barren earth, clouds and rock, the angular, horizontal shards of colour in this canvas also bestow it with a sense of movement or constant flux, leaving the viewer with questions rather than answers about the shifting, personal architecture of Ram Kumar's painterly world. In this work, it is color, 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 the 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" (Ibid., p. 210).

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