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Lot Essay
When I paint, I don’t think about any specific elements – be they spiritual or supernatural elements of nature. They are paintings – pure, simple, plain, painted colour propositions, emerging from one’s past experiences. — Ram Kumar
By the early 1960s, Ram Kumar’s paintings had begun to evolve from the decidedly figural towards an enhanced abstraction. This transformation in his oeuvre reflects the culmination of several personal experiences and memories of the artist’s travels to remote, spiritual, ancient centers in northern India and beyond. In this particular painting, an ethereal landscape is sublimated into a transient, abstract experience. Transposed by a palette of rich, dark, earthy greens and muddy ochres, the painting is shrouded in mystery. The tonal subtleties and variations create an undulating sense of depth and light, which is heightened by the dark, stubborn central masses that hint at human forms, perhaps a home, temporary shelter or even a boat.
“When a literary artist and a literary painter like Ram Kumar progresses towards the abstract, when despite his love for Chirico and the German expressionists, he decides to cast off the company of figures and dwell principally on the expressionism of forms made by man, the metamorphosis generates some of the powers of surrealism. What happens really is that the exorcised familiars, the protagonists that have been exiled, or put to sleep, disappear from the city environment merely to lurk in the shadow of the city of the mind. The painter and the dramatis personae have not been completely disenchanted; they collect to generate a particular mood of romanticism that touches abstraction on one side and surrealism on the other.” (R. Bartholomew, Thought, 7 May 1960, as quoted in Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi, 1996, p. 78)
By the early 1960s, Ram Kumar’s paintings had begun to evolve from the decidedly figural towards an enhanced abstraction. This transformation in his oeuvre reflects the culmination of several personal experiences and memories of the artist’s travels to remote, spiritual, ancient centers in northern India and beyond. In this particular painting, an ethereal landscape is sublimated into a transient, abstract experience. Transposed by a palette of rich, dark, earthy greens and muddy ochres, the painting is shrouded in mystery. The tonal subtleties and variations create an undulating sense of depth and light, which is heightened by the dark, stubborn central masses that hint at human forms, perhaps a home, temporary shelter or even a boat.
“When a literary artist and a literary painter like Ram Kumar progresses towards the abstract, when despite his love for Chirico and the German expressionists, he decides to cast off the company of figures and dwell principally on the expressionism of forms made by man, the metamorphosis generates some of the powers of surrealism. What happens really is that the exorcised familiars, the protagonists that have been exiled, or put to sleep, disappear from the city environment merely to lurk in the shadow of the city of the mind. The painter and the dramatis personae have not been completely disenchanted; they collect to generate a particular mood of romanticism that touches abstraction on one side and surrealism on the other.” (R. Bartholomew, Thought, 7 May 1960, as quoted in Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi, 1996, p. 78)