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"Every sight was like a new composition, a 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." - RAM KUMAR

After a brief period when he... "Every sight was like a new composition, a 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." - RAM KUMAR

After a brief period when he painted figurative works in the 1950s, Ram Kumar turned towards landscapes, which gradually became abstract in form and technique as the artist's vision evolved. In 1960, he made the defining journey to Benaras which marked a turning point in his career. Accompanied by his friend and fellow artist M F Husain, 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. By the late 1950s, the artist had already begun to move away from figurative works in search of a new artistic journey, and he returned to his native Simla in 1959.

Benaras fascinated Kumar, 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. "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)

According to critic Richard Bartholomew, "In the period from 196064 Ram alternated between the "literary" and the "pure" styles of abstraction. Colour and the complexity of imagery determined the mood of the painting. The years from 196064 comprised a predominantly "grey" period, the sternest and the most austere in his career. Using the encaustic process Ram even delved into shades of black. Greys derived from blues and browns set off the facets of the textures, the drifts, the engulfed landforms, the isthumus shapes and the general theme of the fecund but desolate wasteland." (Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 30)

Referring to a similar work from 1965, Bartholomew writes: "Ram Kumar reminds me of poetry; his painting is poetry... there is in this work a brown sandwich filling between the typical greys of texture and tone that he is to explore further and process. Abstract as stiller abstracts go, and yet rooted deeply in the total picture which is a landscape and not the representation of a scene, the painting is an epilogue to the Banaras period. There is, as I see it, no mystery of mood, no mixing of metaphors." (Quoted in Rati Bartholomew, Pablo Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal and Rosalyn D'Mello eds., Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, New Delhi: BART, p. 136)

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