Important Notice

"I must say that I find 'stillness' in a painting as mystifying as... 'movement.' I remember that when I went to Ladakh, everything was so still. I found a bleak landscape, almost like a desert, spread from one end to the other without a single visual break. I think some of my paintings I tried to do about Ladakh were like that - with hardly any break in the form." - RAM KUMAR

Ram Kumar visited Ladakh twice, in 1976 and 1993,... "I must say that I find 'stillness' in a painting as mystifying as... 'movement.' I remember that when I went to Ladakh, everything was so still. I found a bleak landscape, almost like a desert, spread from one end to the other without a single visual break. I think some of my paintings I tried to do about Ladakh were like that - with hardly any break in the form." - RAM KUMAR

Ram Kumar visited Ladakh twice, in 1976 and 1993, each time painting a series of works afterward inspired by the colours of the stark mountains and arid landscape, as seen in the present lot. The artist says, "The landscape haunted me for quite some time. Later when I tried to paint my impressions on canvas, I could not imagine any colors. The eternal silence of a wasted, barren earth which refused to compromise with man could not be visualized in any other colors except grey and black and white." (Artist quoted in Uma Prakash, Ram Kumar: Selected Works 1950-2010, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2010, p. 9)

Desolate, yet meditative, the present lot was painted in 1980 following Kumar's first visit to the Leh district in Ladakh, and follows Kumar's long spiritual journey that began with Benares in the 1960s. "It was a lifelong effort to find some harmony between a rich, throbbing 'spiritually-visited' nature and the secret, fleeting thoughts of an artist." (Artist quoted in Prakash, p. 13)

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