Important Notice

Lot 27

 

Quick Zoom

“...in Benaras, the mystery of both life and death can be expressed. They are visible and there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the two, as we see them when you are away in a normal sort of life. So you see that the city of Benaras, through its depths, conveys much more than outer appearances. It’s much more inner than what is reflected on the outside...” - RAM KUMAR

Ram Kumar made a defining journey to Benaras in 1960... “...in Benaras, the mystery of both life and death can be expressed. They are visible and there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the two, as we see them when you are away in a normal sort of life. So you see that the city of Benaras, through its depths, conveys much more than outer appearances. It’s much more inner than what is reflected on the outside...” - RAM KUMAR

Ram Kumar made a defining journey to Benaras in 1960 in the company of his friend and fellow artist M F Husain. Every morning, the two artists would pack up their materials and travel in opposite directions, each on a quest to discover the city through their art. In the evenings, they would reconvene to share their views and discuss new ideas. What was a merely short yet inspiring trip for Husain would become a lifelong obsession for Kumar. In fact, this trip would mark a turning point in his career.

Kumar’s exposure to this complex, buzzing city that represented the cycle of life and death would become a central subject of his works in the following decades. “The place has a distinct importance. The place, the light in the place plays an important role in creating this distinct character. The gullies after gullies, the widows, the old men waiting to die, Manikarnika ghat and the dead bodies. There is hardly any difference between the dead and the alive there. They are waiting to be cremated.” (Artist quoted in Yashodhara Dalmia, Journeys: Four Generations of Indian Artists in Their Own Words Volume I, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 122)

By this time, the artist had already begun to move from the figurative works of the previous decade to increasingly abstract renderings of cities. He had also returned to his native Simla in 1959 and begun work on landscapes that were imbibed with a universality that transcended known geographies and created a sense of timelessness.

Benaras fascinated Kumar. He began making sketches of the ghats, devoid of human figures, using wax and ink, but rather than a literal representation of the sights around him, his depictions were emotive, negotiating the forms of the landscape with the increasingly abstract depictions of built forms and water. The artist’s unique vision of the busy city — known to be “teeming with people” and with “myriad sounds, high pitched noises and melodious chants” — imagines instead a desolate place devoid of people. However, it is “not really deserted... What he was interested in depicting was not just the jostling crowds at the ghats; not the hubbub of rites; not the hope, or frenzy, or anticipated bliss of the people; but the silent waiting that underlay it all.’ (Geeta Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1978, p. 75)

Speaking of the importance of the city in his artistic evolution, Kumar once remarked, “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.” (Seema Bawa, “Ram Kumar: Artistic Intensity of an Ascetic,” artnewsnviews.com, online)

Depicting a view of the ancient city, the present lot features a cluster of small buildings, rendered as jumbled and tightly-packed squares using an earthy palette, perched on the banks of the river. “Ram Kumar addressed himself to the formal aberrations of mismatched planes, jamming the horizontal perspective against top views inspired by site-mapping and aerial photography, and locking the muddy, impasto-built riverbank constructions into a Cubist geometrical analysis. Gradually, the architecture drained away from his canvases: society itself passed from his concerns, until, during the late 1960s, his paintings assumed the character of abstractionist hymns to nature.” (Ranjit Hoskote, Ram Kumar: Recent Works, Mumbai: Saffronart and Pundole Art Gallery, May-July 2002, p. 6)

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site