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Lot Essay
Ram Kumar’s first visit to Varanasi in 1960 left a lasting impression on his imagination and palette. In an attempt to explain the city’s power and beauty, he noted, “the Sacred Ganga in Varanasi is unique in the world. The city emerging at its bank has an overwhelming impact on people.” (Artist statement, Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, New Delhi, 1996, p. 89)
Marking his stylistic evolution from figuration to abstraction, the landscape of Varanasi influenced the artist’s oeuvre for over forty years. Painted only a year after his first visit to this holy city, The Shore expresses the deep melancholy of the city and sublimates its spectral beauty through its simple yet poignant composition. It radiates a unique sense of stillness, with subtle rays of cold, blue light emanating from pure shades of grey. The city seems suspended in the silence of dawn when its riverbanks are only animated by the movement of the dark river. Describing how his use of color replaced all human presence in these compositions from the early 1960s, Kumar explains, "I understood colour for its syntax of transparency; I combined its foundation with the divisionism applications of pure colour and moody atmospherics. The landscape has now for me become the dynamic form of a layered experience of perception as well as memory, in which the elements of the landscape appear to merge into surroundings, and the human experience is felt more by its absence as well as the little inclusions of colour that I want to bring to the canvas.” (Artist statement, U. Nair, Ram Kumar – The Isolatory Quest, exhibition catalogue, New Delhi, 2005, unpaginated)
For further discussion of the artist's Varanasi landscapes please refer to lots 432 and 435.
Marking his stylistic evolution from figuration to abstraction, the landscape of Varanasi influenced the artist’s oeuvre for over forty years. Painted only a year after his first visit to this holy city, The Shore expresses the deep melancholy of the city and sublimates its spectral beauty through its simple yet poignant composition. It radiates a unique sense of stillness, with subtle rays of cold, blue light emanating from pure shades of grey. The city seems suspended in the silence of dawn when its riverbanks are only animated by the movement of the dark river. Describing how his use of color replaced all human presence in these compositions from the early 1960s, Kumar explains, "I understood colour for its syntax of transparency; I combined its foundation with the divisionism applications of pure colour and moody atmospherics. The landscape has now for me become the dynamic form of a layered experience of perception as well as memory, in which the elements of the landscape appear to merge into surroundings, and the human experience is felt more by its absence as well as the little inclusions of colour that I want to bring to the canvas.” (Artist statement, U. Nair, Ram Kumar – The Isolatory Quest, exhibition catalogue, New Delhi, 2005, unpaginated)
For further discussion of the artist's Varanasi landscapes please refer to lots 432 and 435.