Important Notice

“When one is young and beginning, one’s work is dominated by content, by ideas – but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself. I have grown detached – I want to find the same peace that the mystics found” (as quoted in “Landscapes of the Mind”, Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 117).

In the present lot, an untitled conceptual landscape, Ram Kumar’s mastery of “the language of... “When one is young and beginning, one’s work is dominated by content, by ideas – but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself. I have grown detached – I want to find the same peace that the mystics found” (as quoted in “Landscapes of the Mind”, Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 117).

In the present lot, an untitled conceptual landscape, Ram Kumar’s mastery of “the language of painting”, space and perspective is clear in his negotiations of stillness and movement. Prioritizing form and structure over content and narrative, the artist blends the perceived and the conceived to create new universes out of angular planes of colour that converge and divide, representing land, sea and sky. Like Cubist paintings, the perspective in Kumar’s canvases appears disjointed, sometimes giving the illusion of a bird’s eye view, and at others, approaching the scene from a different angle. Flat wedges of green, white and brown land seem to edge out what little blue is visible, heaving and rolling as the viewer’s eye moves across the surface.

“Ram Kumar’s landscapes are orchestrated as a dynamic equilibrium of floating planes, triggered weights and directional vectors. We respond to these meditative frames precisely because they have moved from the perceptual to the conceptual, from semblance to structure” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Parts of a World: Reflections on the Art of Ram Kumar”, Ram Kumar, Saffronart and Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2002, p. 7).

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