From the 1960s, a change took place in Ram Kumar`s aesthetic. His depiction of architectural structures and landscapes began to take on an increasingly inscrutable aspect. No longer evocations of any single, recognizable terrain, his paintings inhabit a hybrid reality. The jagged, multi-faceted planes of this untitled work enact a mysterious fusion of sites visited and remembered. "There is a spatial quality in the recent...
From the 1960s, a change took place in Ram Kumar`s aesthetic. His depiction of architectural structures and landscapes began to take on an increasingly inscrutable aspect. No longer evocations of any single, recognizable terrain, his paintings inhabit a hybrid reality. The jagged, multi-faceted planes of this untitled work enact a mysterious fusion of sites visited and remembered. "There is a spatial quality in the recent paintings (1970 onwards), a sense of flight, of movement and it seems that the painter is looking at landscape in a number of ways and from different angles and points of view." (p. 30, Richard Bartholomew, "The Abstract as a Pictorial Proposition", Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, ed. Gagan Gill, Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996)
Perhaps more intensely than before, Ram Kumar`s `abstract` paintings symbolically gesture to the human condition. The earthy brown and ochre of this composition, more somber than his typical inclusion of blues and greens during this period, create a melancholy intensity. "This compressed composition, which carries in it the abstract predicament of man, and the human and tactile feel of the living landscape, characterizes the style of his recent painting and, in fact, forms its very substance." (p. 33, Ibid.)