Untitled (Boats)

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 artist's response to several personal experiences and travels to remote, spiritual, ancient centers in India, such as Benares. In this painting, an ethereal landscape is sublimated into a transient, abstract experience. Transposed by a palette of rich, dark hues of blue and green, 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, the mast like forms suggesting boats settled upon the water. In the distance, the artist hints at the the banks or ghats of the river. This elegant and contemplative landscape from the late sixties exemplifies a shift in Ram Kumar's paintings, in particular those inspired by Benares to leave only the purest and most essential elements of the composition.

"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, Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi, 1996, p. 78)