Ram Kumar (b. 1924)

Acquired prior to 1960

Ram Kumar: A Retrospective, Aicon Gallery, London, March 31--April 30, 2010 and Aicon Gallery, New York, November 23–December 18, 2010

Ram Kumar: A Retrospective, Aicon Gallery, New York and London, 2010, p. 38

Some small chips to dark blue pigment at lower register. Small crease to canvas at upper right. Some flaking to blackish pigment at center, now stable.
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Throughout the course of the 1960s, Ram Kumar’s work shifted away from figuration and toward pure abstraction. By the end of the decade, the elements of his landscapes had been reduced to the most basic geometric shapes, juxtaposed in shifting vertical and horizontal planes as seen in the present work, Untitled (Blue Abstract).

Hoskote explains: “[Ram Kumar] addressed himself to the formal aberrations of mismatched planes, jamming the horizontal perspective against top views inspired by site-mapping and aerial photography, and locking the muddy, impasto-built riverbank constructions into a Cubist geoMetricas l analysis. Gradually, the architecture drained away from his canvases: society itself passed from his concerns, until, during the late 1960s, his paintings assumed the character of abstractionist hymns to nature,” (Hoskote, Ram Kumar: Recent Works, Bombay, 2002, p. 6).   

The background in works from Ram Kumar’s post-figurative abstract period, starting in the 1960s, begins to take on as much significance as his now infamous early works of the ‘teeming masses’ from the 1950s. The dramatic shift in Ram Kumar’s palette and preferred style during this period has a strong correlation to the natural world—conceptualized through something as basic as the negative spaces between buildings, transitioning from the painterly concerns of close, urban life to the spaciousness of the earth and sky.