Important Notice

As a young artist in the 1950s, Ram Kumar used the human figure to convey the sense of disillusionment and alienation he experienced in the years following the Partition of India. However, by the end of the decade, he began slowly transitioning from these forms and embracing cityscapes, landscapes, and abstraction in his art. The shift was prompted by his encounter with European Abstractionists in Paris, as well as his travels to Greece, Italy,... As a young artist in the 1950s, Ram Kumar used the human figure to convey the sense of disillusionment and alienation he experienced in the years following the Partition of India. However, by the end of the decade, he began slowly transitioning from these forms and embracing cityscapes, landscapes, and abstraction in his art. The shift was prompted by his encounter with European Abstractionists in Paris, as well as his travels to Greece, Italy, the United States, and Germany.

A trip to Varanasi in 1960 proved pivotal to Kumar’s move to abstract landscapes, a genre that would go on to define his oeuvre. The Cubist architectonic structures that once formed a backdrop for forlorn, disenfranchised figures were brought to the forefront, eventually eliminating them completely. Though captivated by cityscapes, the artist continued to return to the mountains, including his hometown of Shimla. He began looking to nature for inspiration and developed a unique style of planar abstraction. The present lot demonstrates the artist’s masterful balance between “free, swathing brushwork and the taut linearity of geometric elements. [He] translates the landscape into a system of lines, planes, blocks; their machine-edged logic, entering into dialogue with texture and tone, governs the distribution of significant masses over the picture space.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “The Poet of the Visionary Landscape,” Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 38)

In contrast to his early grey period, one observes in the present lot a softer palette that Kumar developed after a visit to Kashmir in the mid?1960s. Critic Richard Bartholomew notes, “pinks and mauves mitigate the sterner greys and add a quiet lyricism to the composition.” (Richard Bartholomew, “The Abstract as a Pictorial Proposition,” Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 30) In his landscape works Kumar displays a sensitive inner spirit revealed through a skilful command over colour and texture. “The moods and sensations that were evoked in him on the outer world would play out as colours and textures… It is left to colour and brush strokes to transmit the moods and sensations that the various topographical elements convey.” (Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2016, pp. 12–13)

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