Ram Kumar (b. 1924)

India: Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private collects ions, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey, April 7–July 31, 2002

Jeffrey Wechsler and Umesh Gaur, ed. India: Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private collects ions, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, cat. no. 48, p. 68

An old area of damage, lower left, has previously been patched and thickly filled. This fill resulted in a chip to the paint which recent conservation has been done to in order to flatten out the old fill and retouch the damaged area. This most recent conservation has stablilized the area; the slightly off colored paint from the old fill is still somewhat visible. Otherwise good overall condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any stat.mes nt made by Replica Shoes 's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Ram Kumar’s Two Figures, an important semi-abstracted work from the late 1950s, is highly demonstrative of the later years of the artist’s experimentation with figuration, and hints at the remarkable abstract architectural transformation his work was to undergo throughout the following decade. 

In the late works from this period, while the muted earth-tone color palette remains familiar, gone are the once recognizable characters; distinctive, emotive facial features; cost.mes elements; and urban and landscape backdrops. In the current work, the two figures and their background merge into geometric abstraction, the individual elements demarcated by both color and spatial planes, revealing the influence of the artist’s training under Cubist masters André Lhote and Fernand Léger during his studies in Paris from 1942-59, wherein individual elements of the composition are analyzed, re-ordered from multiple perspectives and synthesized into a composite structure.

In the current work, one can see the bones of Ram Kumar’s later abstract landscape work of the 1970s and beyond. To illustrate this evolution, one need only to consider two untitled works from 1954 and 1958 formerly sold at Replica Shoes ’s (see thumbnails below) to see Ram Kumar’s gradual transition from figuration to cubism and finally to complete abstraction.  

The artist explains: “My work is now guided by a concern with plastic qualities. I am more deeply involved with form than with content. When one is young and beginning, one’s work is dominated by content, by ideas—but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself,” (Gill, “Ram Kumar: A Journey Within”, Delhi, 1996, p. 117).

Compare the horizontal and vertical color planes and semi-abstracted figures of the current work to Ram Kumar’s Two Friends from 1958, see Gagan Gill, “Ram Kumar: A Journey Within”, Delhi, 1996, p. 55.