Ram Kumar

(1924-2018)

Two Girls

Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, France.
Acquired in India by the predecessors of the vendor in the early 1950s when they worked at the French Embassy;
Thence by descent.

Published
Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, pg. 49.

'My figures were taken from the streets I saw around me, and I did reflect their sense of confusion, their search for identity, their alienation.' Ram Kumar in The Human Figure is a Distraction, Free Press Journal, 19th October 1986.

Contemporary for Ram Kumar was never a problem of adopting to mannerisms from the West, just as he was not plagued by 'tradition' in a false search for continuity. A product of his times, he became a true modern by simply remaining himself. It is in this sense that Ram Kumar becomes of the most important contemporary Indian painters.' - J. Swaminathan, Link, February 26, 1961.

'Ram Kumar looking into eyes which have lost their animation, eyes, that are windows into nothingness, is a painter who had relied on his personal vision for his artistic endeavours. From the early paintings of the artist with sad dropping figures, rendered with childlike directness, lingering like shadows, in gloomy surroundings of gaunt and empty streets and houses, to the palpitating abstractions in subtle nuances of colour today, the artist has covered a whole epoch of pain-taking and soul-searching research.' (J. Swaminathan, Link, 15 August, 1961.)

'The proletariat often subdued the locale. Then humanity, without the stamp of dialectics emerged. They had fewer slogans to shout, and they stood in the streets of loneliness that Ram Kumar has made us so familiar with - the intestines of the city are a compound of European memories, and of Indian conditions.' (Richard Bartholomew, Exhibition catalogue, 1959, Kumar Gallery, New Delhi)

'Ram Kumar, who began his 'career' as a writer before he held a brush in India and later in Paris, had outlined in words what he had to say in his pictures. His writings were 'committed' but not violent. And so, his early paintings inherited this passivity though their dark palette had the ominosity of Russian surrealists.' (Aman Nath, Exhibition catalogue, 17-26th October, Gallerie Romain Rolland, New Delhi, 1988)

'Ram Kumar's paintings reveal figures in a stance, in arrested motion. They reveal a search for the simplification of formal structure where the parts are few but valid. His drawing has the power to place the telling gesture and the small, articulate detail. Though the figures just now are reminiscent of Picasso's drawings in the 1920s the similarity ends there.' (Richard Bartholomew, The Hindustan Times Weekly, 23 October 1955.)

'I think perhaps, every artist starts with the figurative, because we go to an art school, there is a model here, and we have to do drawings, learning anatomy and all that, and so perhaps a very natural thing...at least for me. The reason I made these sorts of paintings, was that I was a bit inspired by the left politics of the time, there was an inclination towards the tragic side of life...It started here and became more mature in Paris. And even if I had not been inspired by politics, perhaps I would have made the same kind of paintings, because that is a part of my nature...some sort of sadness, misery or whatever it is. Also in my short stories, it is always towards people who have suffered.' (Ram Kumar in The Flamed Mosaic: Indian Contemporary Painting, Neville Tuli, 1st September 1993, p. 364)

'Ram Kumar had the privilege to also study under Fernand Leger. Upon returning to India he began depicting social injustice of the times, focussing on themes such as the alienation suffered by the urban middle classes, young unemployed graduated and the like. The issued were structured using an expressionist figuration within a loose cubist framework. The influence of Masaccio and Modigliani was also clear in the earliest figurative studies.' (Nevile Tuli,The Flamed Mosaic: Indian Contemporary Painting, Mapin Publishing PVT, 1997, p. 209)

'He painted urban decay and struggle rather than large scale violent upheavals. In his early paintings Kumar took his stylistic cues from Amrita Sher-Gil, Leger, Amedeo Modigliani and broadly from expressionism and cubism. Several commentators have compared his work work to that of Ben Shahn in its graphic qualities and its not to social realism. That realism also appears in his Hindi fiction, in which, as in his painting, he explored alienation of the urban individual and viewed city dwellers as continually experiencing a feeling of exile.' (Susan S. Bean, Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after Independence, Peabody Essex Museum, 2013 p.92)

Upon returning from Paris, Ram Kumar's early years in Delhi were spent observing and painting the people around him. He used these figurative works to express the feelings of alienation, disillusionment and isolation he sensed. The subjects were symbolic of the overall oppression he believed was the inherent reality of society, to which the artist, and by extension his subjects belong. Works from this period reflect concerns that stemmed largely from the trials of urban living in a "city environment circumscribed by the constrictions of urban society and motivated by conflicts which ensue from dense population, unemployment, artificial relationships.' (Richard Bartholomew, Attitudes to the Social Condition: Notes on Ram Kumar, Lalit Kala Contemporary 24-25, New Delhi, 1981, p. 31.)

Ram Kumar's early life was marked by academic pursuits. He graduated with a degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, in 1946 and first came to prominence as a writer of short stories however decided to pursue painting in tandem, given his creative tendencies, and the financial benefits that would accrue from doing both. His passion for art soon led him to embark on a journey to Paris in 1949, where he pursued formal artistic training at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie André Lhote. Immersed in the vibrant artistic and cultural milieu of post-war Europe, he became a member of the French Communist Party, and became well acquainted with radicals including Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Roger Garaudy, and Fernand Leger.

In 1953, Kumar returned to India, his creative sensibilities enriched by his experiences abroad. Settling in Delhi, he soon became a prominent figure in the burgeoning Indian art scene, alongside contemporaries such as MF Husain, FN Souza, and SH Raza. Like them, he was deeply influenced by the socio-political climate of post-independence India and 'spent that decade, the first decade of India's independence, perfecting an elegiac figuration imbued with the spirit of tragic modernism. Infused with an ideological fervour, he drew equally upon exemplars like Courbet, Rouault, Kathe Koliwitz and Edward Hooper, dedicating himself to the creation of an iconography of depression and victimhood. He wished to design an idiom that would portray, at a pitch of stylised intensity, the misery of the common people under the bourgeois-capitalist order. To this period belong the lost souls: the monumental Picassoesque figures packed into a darkened picture-womb, the bewildered clerks, terrorised workers and emaciated doll-women trapped in the industrial city. Rendered through a semi-cubist discipline...these fugitives - white-collar and blue-collar, awkward in the ill-fitting costume of urbanity - are trapped in a hostile environment, and in their own divided selves...Pressed flat against the canvas, his protagonists can do little but squint out at the exits that are not there.' (Ranjit Hoskote 'The Poet of the Visionary Landscape.' in Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, pg. 37)

Kumar found himself grappling with the challenges of nation-building and the complexities of modernization. While he did not overtly align himself with any specific political party or ideology, Kumar's art during this period reflected a keen awareness of the social injustices and inequalities that plagued Indian society. His figurative paintings, in particular, often depicted scenes of everyday life that highlighted the struggles of the common people, capturing the dignity and resilience of those marginalized by poverty and exploitation. Through his art, Kumar sought to bear witness to the realities of his time, offering a poignant commentary on the pressing issues of his era while advocating for social change and justice.

Two Girls is an evocative figurative work from this period. Two figures occupy a shared space, their presence imbued with a sense of mystery and depth. Set against a backdrop of muted tones, the two girls emerge as central protagonists, their forms rendered with a delicate touch and a sense of tender vulnerability. Despite the simplicity of the composition, Kumar infuses the scene with a palpable sense of tension through the masterful use of light and shadow creating an atmosphere of subdued tranquillity. These Modiglianiesque figures are not lacking in charm or dignity and the two sisters wear their suffering with stoicism. The girls' gazes, though directed outward, seem to be turned inward, lost in thoughts and reverie. Their expressions betray a sense of introspection. Their strained postures are amplified by the sharp, geometric shapes that form the cityscape in the background. There appears to be a chair and books stacked behind the girl on the right, perhaps a nod to his fictional work Ghar Bane Ghar Toote, which dealt with the struggle of the educated unemployed in Karol Bagh, Delhi, a refugee colony.

These early figurative works are perhaps best described by Sham Lal's essay, 'Between being and nothingness,' where he says,

'As a young artist, Ram Kumar was captivated by, or rather obsessed with, the human face because of the ease and intensity with which it registers the drama of life. The sad, desperate, lonely, hopeless or lost faces, which fill the canvases of his early period, render with pathos his view of the human condition.

The human condition is no overblown phrase in this context. It is pertinent because what Ram Kumar tries to do in this early work is something more profound than merely painting to what can be cured by acts of social engineering. This is why these can be understood only as human, not social documents.

There is no trace of seething rage not any hint of a protest here. These men do not even need to speak to us. Their mere looks are enough to tell us all we want to know about them, all that has made them what they are. (Sham Lal in 'Between being and nothingness' Ram Kumar: A Journey Within, Vadehra Art Gallery, 1996, pg.15-16)