Abstract Trip

AT Sotheby8217;s Indian art auction last month, one of artist Ram Kumar8217;s works8212;a landscape in ochre-black, made in the 8217;70s...

AT Sotheby8217;s Indian art auction last month, one of artist Ram Kumar8217;s works8212;a landscape in ochre-black, made in the 8217;70s8212;crossed the magic Rs 1 crore mark. On surpassing contemporaries like Tyeb Mehta and Maqbool Fida Husain, Kumar received several congratulatory phone calls including one from his long-time friend and artist Satish Gujral. But ironically, the artist doesn8217;t recall working on that landscape. 8216;8216;I don8217;t remember painting that one,8217;8217; he says.

Delhi-based Kumar is as absorbed in his art today as he was 30 years ago. It8217;s just another morning for the 81-year-old master. He applies a spot of red paint in one corner of a blank canvas. A dab of grey in another corner, and the canvas begins to breathe. One of India8217;s seminal abstract artists, the challenge of bringing a blank canvas alive still perturbs him. 8216;8216;It8217;s scary because if I apply one wrong stroke, the whole painting goes wrong,8217;8217; says Kumar.

After a Masters in Economics from Delhi University, Kumar had a short stint with the Hindustan newspaper soon after Independence. He gave up a professional career to study art under theoretician Andre Lhote, in Paris, in the early 1950s. He began as a figurative artist, but the form could not stimulate him for long. 8216;8216;Humanity is an important part of my work, which, I felt, was not possible to depict in the figurative form,8217;8217; the artist says. Kumar is one of the few painters who never returned to the figurative form, but he has had a long obsession with landscapes. Memories of his visits to Ladakh in the 8217;60s are still fresh on his mind. 8216;8216;In Ladakh, it was all rock, rock, rock, and being accustomed to the green hills of Shimla, my hometown, it had a deep emotional impact on me,8217;8217; Kumar says.

He also remembers his first visit to Benaras in the early 8217;60s, a city which forms the backdrop of his famed Varanasi series. 8216;8216;I went with Husain and lived in a big house that belonged to author Premchand. We used to go our separate ways to sketch in the morning and meet in the evening,8217;8217; he recalls.

Unlike his paintings, Kumar8217;s short stories in Hindi deal with real events and people. His five collections of stories8212;Husna Bibi, Ek Cheera, Jhinguro Ke Swar, Dimak and Chittalehk8212;are not as well known as his art, but words have allowed Kumar to find the perfect harmony between abstraction and reality.

Maitreyee Handique