Untitled

A new phase of Ram Kumar’s paintings began in the 1970s. As Geeta Kapur explains, “[…] These paintings are full of allusions to nature; nature as seen and felt in a tropical country. He paints with the colour of the sky and earth; the sandy grain of the pigment suggests a riverbed or a seashore. The shapes, perhaps a consequence of these initial allusions, can be read as props in a scenario: a broken shack, a bit of fence, a bush, a beam of wood. The shadow of a bird in flight, streaking across the golden plains. But these references should not be overstressed. It is the sensations in nature to which he is now most keenly attuned: the dazzlement of sunlight, the exhilaration of high breeze, the heat from a sun-scorched earth. […] He has come out into the open, rejoicing in the sensuousness of nature. Sand, sea, dust tracts and sky, the sites are now propitious; occasions for exuberant memories and swept with gusty winds.” (G. Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, Delhi, 1978, p. 85)