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Lot 11

 

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The abstract visual vocabulary that Ram Kumar perfected by the late 1960s was neither intended to startle his viewers, nor to disconnect the artist from them and the rest of the world. Instead, it demands a pause and deep reflection, forging a bond between the work and the viewer.

As Sham Lal explains, "Ram Kumar has no desire to shock or seduce the eye which makes so much of abstract art slide into the sensational or the decorative.... The abstract visual vocabulary that Ram Kumar perfected by the late 1960s was neither intended to startle his viewers, nor to disconnect the artist from them and the rest of the world. Instead, it demands a pause and deep reflection, forging a bond between the work and the viewer.

As Sham Lal explains, "Ram Kumar has no desire to shock or seduce the eye which makes so much of abstract art slide into the sensational or the decorative. The ascetic streak in his mental make-up will not permit any such indulgence. The sense of quiet that pervades his work invites contemplation, not a gaze. The search for a personal idiom lands many contemporary artists in a private language which bars all strangers entry into their world. Ram Kumar's work never suffers from a breakdown of communication. Some of his paintings indeed demand a silent communion and, in moments of felicity, we are even able to converse with them" ("Between Being and Nothingness", Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art, New Delhi, 1996, p. 15).

In the present lot, painted in 1975 and representative of the zenith of Ram Kumar's deconstructionist abstraction, the artist uses a subdued palette of browns to render a fragmented or prismatic landscape. Transcending the familiar, Kumar's large canvases create a sense of timelessness that both emphasizes and absorbs the individual. Contemplating these new forms and worlds that populated his work in this period, the artist notes, "I am outside the world that used to be mine. I am experiencing new revelations, losing faith in old patterns which I followed for so many years. Losing is easy but finding a new foothold is difficult. I crave for absolute isolation, far away from these surroundings…Sometimes glimpses of unusual forms, movement of depths, rhythmic lines come to my mind. But they seem only like some fragments - however significant they may appear, they have to be united with something more solid, something difficult to fathom. Some way has to be found out" (as quoted in Ibid., p. 204).

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