Important Notice

"Benares is important for me both as an artist and as a human being, the first paintings came at a point when I wanted to develop elements in figurative painting and go beyond it, my first visit to the city invoked an emotional reaction as it had peculiar associations. But such romantic ideas were dispelled when I came face to face with reality. There was so much pain and sorrow of humanity. As an artist it became a challenge to portray ... "Benares is important for me both as an artist and as a human being, the first paintings came at a point when I wanted to develop elements in figurative painting and go beyond it, my first visit to the city invoked an emotional reaction as it had peculiar associations. But such romantic ideas were dispelled when I came face to face with reality. There was so much pain and sorrow of humanity. As an artist it became a challenge to portray this agony and suffering, its intensity required the use of symbolic motifs, so my Benares is of a representative sort." - RAM KUMAR

In the late 1950s, Ram Kumar began to move away from the genre of figurative art, which had been driven by his deep interest in the human condition, but which he had begun to find limiting. He moved back to Simla in 1959, and began to paint exploratory landscapes devoid of human habitation. In 1960, Kumar made the pivotal journey to Benaras with his friend and fellow artist M F Husain, which marked a defining point in his career, for this vibrant, complex city on the banks of the Ganges - symbolising the cycles of life, death and rebirth - would become a central subject of his works for decades after.

Exposed to a gamut of emotions and suffering that pointed to the truths of nature beyond the individual human experience, Kumar's initial depictions of the ghats negotiate the forms of the landscape with the increasingly abstract depictions of built forms and water. These early Benares works, including the present lot, showed buildings and boats against the backdrop of a blue riverbank, painted in a Cubist style, presenting a fairly realistic, aerial view of the city.

Kumar later described this period in an artist statement, "...the mysterious steps on every ghat emerged from the river leading upward to enter the dark labyrinths of the city which was submerged in the stark reality of daily life. Every sight was like a new composition, a still life artistically organised to be interpreted in colours. It was not merely outward appearances which were fascinating but they were vibrant with an inner life of their own, very deep and profound, which left an everlasting impression on my artistic sensibility. I could feel a new visual language emerging from the depth of an experience.??? (Artist quoted in Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 89)

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