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PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED
PRIVATE COLLECTION, NEW DELHI
7
RAM KUMAR
(b. 1924)
Untitled
Signed and dated 'Ram Kumar 1963' (on the reverse)
1963
Oil on canvas
14 x 20 in (35.6 x 50.8 cm)
Rs 20,00,000 ‒ 30,00,000
$ 31,750 - 47,620
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist
The present lot is an unusual work from Ram Kumar’s early
Benaras paintings. The small size and the textured brown
background, which veers towards maroon, are both rare in his
oeuvre. As is now well known, a trip to Varanasi with Husain
in 1960 was a defining moment in Ram Kumar’s life. The city
of death and rebirth supplied Kumar with a new exposure to
human suffering and he sought to portray the despondence
and torment through increasingly abstract depictions of the
city.
His paintings from this period were characterised by their
gaunt, dark colour palette, as seen in the present lot. “The years
from 1960‒64 comprised a predominantly “grey” period, the
sternest and more austere in his career. Using the encaustic
process Ram even delved into shades of black. Greys derived
from blues and browns set off the facets of the textures, the
drifts, the engulfed landforms, the isthmus shapes and the
general theme of the fecund but desolate landscape.” (Richard
Bartholomew, “The Abstract as a Pictorial Proposition,” Gagan
Gill ed.,
Ram Kumar: A Journey Within
, New Delhi: Vadehra Art
Gallery, 1996, p. 30) The present lot presents just such a Cubist
patchwork of riverbank buildings which seem to float on the
maroon backdrop with no suggestion of water or sky, invoking
isolation that is without scale or mooring.