Ram Kumar

Acquired from Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, circa 1987- 89

There is very minor craquelure present in the paint that is only visible upon very close inspection. There is light rubbing and some very small accretions including fly spots visible particularly along the edges of the work. This painting is in good overall condition, as viewed.
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“All we can do face to face with this picture is wonder whether what is shows is a treeless expanse swept by a gale or a storm – swept inner landscape of the mind. The answer does not really matter. The meaning of the work lies in the verve with which the artist brings the outer and inner realities together” (S. Lal, ‘Between Being and Nothingness,’ Ram Kumar, Vadehra Art Gallery, London, 2007, p. 11).

Using colour and subtle gradations in his canvases, Kumar is able to break down forms and ideas into their abstracted core.  Through this practice he had come to the realisation that abstraction had an inherent presence in all Indian art, and had formed separately to its Western counterpart.  Kumar’s abstraction pulls free from the inherent logic of perspective and any attempt to reproduce an instant visual mirror image and instead displays an alternate way of sharing an experience.  He is able to create a visual language using shape, form, and muted colours - pointedly adhering to his non-objective or non-figurative style.

“It is not the anguish of absence which Ram Kumar is trying to ‘represent’ in his paintings, but while painting the figures, he is also painting the nothingness, which lies in the heart of their beings. If the Marxist critics failed to unlock the secret of being in Ram’s paintings, then its nothingness, its ‘non-being’ is also remained undecipherable to his existentialist interpreters” (N. Verma, ‘From Solitude to Salvation,’ Ram Kumar, Vadehra Art Gallery, London, 2007, p. 22).