Modern Indian Art
December 27 - 28, 2021
Winning Bid
Signed & Dated : Verso
This work comprises of four canvases
each measuring 32 x 68.25 in (81.3 x 173.4 cm)
Exhibited : ‘Ode to the Monumental’ at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 2014. ‘Ode to the Monumental’ at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2014.
Published : ‘Ode to the Monumental : Celebration Visuality Ideology’ by Saffronart, pg. 8.
Provenance : Property of an eminent collector based in Mumbai. Artwork was acquired by the present owner from AstaGuru.
Height of the figure - 6ft
Ram Kumar, like many of his confreres among the first generation of post-colonial Indian artists - including such figures as F N Souza, M F Husain, Paritosh Sen, Jehangir Sabavala, Krishen Khanna, S H Raza and Akbar Padamsee - combined an internationalist desire with the need to belong emphatically to their homeland. In its internationalist mood, this generation looked to the early 20th-century modernisms of Paris, London and Vienna for inspiration; its need to belong prompted an interest in the construction of a viable ‘Indian’ aesthetic that bore a dynamic relationship to an Indian identity. With Ram Kumar, this quest for an indigenist tenor has not meant a superficial inventory of ‘native’ motifs offered as evidence of a static and essentialist Indian identity. Instead, as I have already suggested, he demonstrates that a painter can enact the innermost dramas of his culture while maintaining the individuality, even idiosyncrasy of his performance.
Excerpts from "Parts of a World: Reflections on the Art of Ram Kumar" by Ranjit Hoskote, 2002
Ram Kumar lives and works from Delhi