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Lot 20

 

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The present lot, painted in 1961, is one of Kumar's earliest Benaras paintings, a subject that became a defining theme in his oeuvre. A year prior, Kumar took a trip to Varanasi, the city of death and rebirth, which supplied him with a new exposure to human suffering that lay at the intersection of faith and torment. With this turn, he sought to liberate reality from its human context.

Kumar's early Benares works negotiate the... The present lot, painted in 1961, is one of Kumar's earliest Benaras paintings, a subject that became a defining theme in his oeuvre. A year prior, Kumar took a trip to Varanasi, the city of death and rebirth, which supplied him with a new exposure to human suffering that lay at the intersection of faith and torment. With this turn, he sought to liberate reality from its human context.

Kumar's early Benares works negotiate the cityscape and the landscape with the occasional, but increasingly abstract depictions of built forms and the river. "Yet the greyish mist that enveloped the temple city apparently snaked its way into the landscape as well. It was as if the artist could not yet throw off its oppressive weight. The process had to be gradual. He would also continue to toggle between expressionism and abstraction, just as he would oscillate between the city and the landscape." (Meera Menezes, Ram Kumar: Traversing the Landscapes of the Mind, Mumbai: Saffronart, 2016, p. 12)

Domes, spires and homes are still visible in the predominantly brown composition with the occasional patch of a blue river. Richard Bartholomew says of this period, "The years from 1960-64 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 isthmus shapes and the general theme of the fecund but desolate landscape." (Rati Bartholomew, Pablo Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal and Rosalyn D'Mello eds., Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, New Delhi: BART, 2012, p. 539)

This sense of desolation is clearly visible in the present lot, with its thick, muddy impasto. "The dextrous use of colour conveys the feeling of a dark and dank city swaddled in river mists and smoke. This Benaras as Kumar paints it is no city of joy, this is a city of the dead and the dying." (Menezes, pp. 11-12) It is a vision that is unique and quintessentially Kumar's.

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