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Lot 15

 

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Initially expressing himself through a figurative idiom and then a largely architectonic one, Ram Kumar only turned to complete abstraction in the late 1960s. Over the last five decades, these abstract works have represented the artist's journey towards what he terms the authentic 'language of painting'. Although they are drained of human and architectural forms, paintings like the present lot are firmly rooted in Kumar's experiences of nature,... Initially expressing himself through a figurative idiom and then a largely architectonic one, Ram Kumar only turned to complete abstraction in the late 1960s. Over the last five decades, these abstract works have represented the artist's journey towards what he terms the authentic 'language of painting'. Although they are drained of human and architectural forms, paintings like the present lot are firmly rooted in Kumar's experiences of nature, particularly those of his youth in the foothills of the Himalayas. "With all the transcendental lyricism of his recent landscapes, Ram Kumar has never been attracted to the unearthy or other-worldly, his feet have always been planted in the terra firma, the palpable reality of the world. His 'abstractions' are not flights into the 'unknown', but like a shifting beam of light they move, passing through the entire space of the painting, from one segment of reality to another, uncovering the hidden relations, between the sky, the rock, the river. The sacred resides not in the objects depicted, but in the relations discovered" (Nirmal Verma, "From Solitude to Salvation", Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 1996, p. 27).

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