Ram Kumar
(1924 - 2018)
Landscape
"As I began to paint, the landscapes came naturally and gradually, the outlines faded into abstracts... There is an enigmatic mystery about the inner life of a colour applied on canvas. It stands out by itself in the beginning but slowly it starts building up relationships with other areas, other colours, and forms. This continues. There is a pause, a silence, an accident and in the end some sort of harmony." - RAM KUMAR Nature...
"As I began to paint, the landscapes came naturally and gradually, the outlines faded into abstracts... There is an enigmatic mystery about the inner life of a colour applied on canvas. It stands out by itself in the beginning but slowly it starts building up relationships with other areas, other colours, and forms. This continues. There is a pause, a silence, an accident and in the end some sort of harmony." - RAM KUMAR Nature has always played a crucial role in Ram Kumar's artistic and spiritual journey. What began as an exploration of the sacred and profane in Benaras in 1960, continued to become a lifelong introspective effort to find a sense of harmony within himself. Kumar's affinity for painting his surroundings began in childhood, which he spent at the foothills of the glorious Himalayan mountains in Simla. Nature, according to Nirmal Verma, "came both as a release from his past and a return to it... a nostalgic longing for a 'past' gone forever. They also symbolised peace and inner security, as if by returning to them, one can salvage a spark of happiness from the ruins of one's adulthood... by 'abstracting' the image of mountains, he released them from the fixed memory of his childhood and thus eternalised them as something which is part of nature." ("From Solitude to Salvation," Gagan Gill ed., Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, p. 26) Kumar's works from the 1960s, following his trip to Benaras, were a unique mixture of Cubism and abstraction. In the beginning, he preferred dark and muted colours, evoking an atmosphere of desolation and sullenness. This changed after a trip to Kashmir in the mid-1960s, giving way to a more cheerful palette and semi-representational forms. Kumar's many travels over the decade changed his artistic vision. Soon, even architectonic elements began disappearing, replaced by a desire for pure abstraction. "He would look to nature for inspiration and transform his contemplation of the landscape into an irregular patchwork quilt of colour. There was no longer any attempt to portray a realistic representation of what he observed. Instead, the outer landscape would transform itself into the inner mindscape, which in turn would manifest itself on canvas and paper. The moods and sensations that were evoked in him by his meditation on the outer world would play out as colours and textures." (Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2016, pp. 1213) In works such as the present lot, the artist "translates the landscape into a system of lines, planes, blocks; their machine-edged logic, entering into dialogue with texture and tone, govern the distribution of significant masses over the picture space... He does not mirror reality, but subjects it to a prismatic analysis: his topography, for instance, is a diagram of forces in a field rather than a picturesque postcard view; each city, each trapfall is a summation of views from various angles, arranged on the same plane for the discernment of the viewer." (Ranjit Hoskote, "The Poet of the Visionary Landscape," Gagan Gill ed., p. 38)
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Lot
10
of
30
SUMMER LIVE AUCTION
13 JULY 2021
Estimate
Rs 55,00,000 - 65,00,000
$74,830 - 88,440
ARTWORK DETAILS
Ram Kumar
Landscape
Signed in Devnagari and dated indistinctly (lower right); signed and inscribed 'Ram Kumar/ LANDSCAPE' (on the reverse)
Oil on canvas
29.5 x 24.5 in (74.8 x 62 cm)
PROVENANCE Acquired directly from the artist Collection of Krishen Khanna Acquired from the above Private Collection, New Delhi
Category: Painting
Style: Figurative
ARTWORK SIZE:
Height of Figure: 6'