He may not have been an auction darling, but for the self-effacing Ram Kumar – one of India’s foremost abstract painters – it’s more about the presentation of his art than the projection of his artistic personality, says Anindya Kanti Biswas
The living legend continues to experiment, create and mesmerize viewers with his masterly strokes. It’s a revelation, however, when the shy and self-effacing Ram Kumar, 91, confesses that more than his passion, it was money that was a major factor in his decision to take to painting. In a candid confession, the master who is rightfully regarded as one of India’s foremost abstract painters, reveals how he quit his bank job to paint because “you could sell two works for Rs 300 and manage the whole month.” As a child, the artist who began painting rather late in life, says he was least interested in art. “I belonged to a large middle-class family and my father was a government employee in Shimla. There was no emphasis on creative pursuits, but somehow my younger brother Nirmal and I got into writing. For us, it was also a way of earning some money,” he admits. In fact, he studied Economics at the Masters Level at Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College because it would help him get a bank job. “Given a choice, I would have taken literature in my graduation, but because Economics would have fetched me a job in a bank, I opted for it on my father’s insistence,” he says. “I got a job in Shimla Bank, too, but my interest was elsewhere. I left it within a year and came to Delhi to join a Hindi newspaper as a trainee for Rs 50. I would have got a job after six months of internship. But I didn’t take up the job; instead, I enrolled myself for MA and managed my expenses by doing some translations from Hindi to English and sending articles and stories for magazines and newspapers.” As chance would have it, while studying economics he came across a poster for an art exhibition.
He recalls, “It was in 1945. I was very excited and enrolled for classes at Sarada Ukil School of Art in Delhi, where Sailoz Mukherjee used to teach. Initially, I just went for the evening classes when Western art was taught. Later, I started going in the mornings for lessons on Indian art.” In 1948, he gave up his bank job to pursue art and participated in a group exhibition in Delhi. This is the year when S. H. Raza first saw his work, especially ‘Kashmir Landscapes’ at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS). Ram Kumar was also impressed with Raza’s work and invited him home. Raza spent a night in Ram Kumar’s house and did a large portrait of Ram Kumar in gouache. Later, both went to Mumbai and Ram Kumar stayed for a month there. The artist found an art atmosphere in Mumbai and got inspired by reading Marg and Illustrated Weekly because of regular coverage of art scene in these magazines. Once back in Delhi, he met with the grand old man of the Indian art scene, B. C. Sanyal, who formed ‘Delhi Shilpi Chakra’ before forming the ‘Progressive Art Group’ and became one of its founding members. Apart from Sanyal, Sailoz Mookherjea and Ram Kumar, the other members of the ‘Delhi Shilpi Chakra’ group were Satish Gujral, Dhanraj Bhagat, P. N. Mago, Amarnath Seahgal, Harkishen Lal, Rajesh Mehra and many more. In 1949, Ram Kumar held his first solo show at YMCA in Simla and sold his first paintings to Dr Zakir Husain, the then Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia University, who bought four paintings. This exhibition travelled to Delhi’s Town Hall and it was here that Ram Kumar met Claude Journot, cultural counsellor at the French Embassy, who invited him to visit France. Ram Kumar left for Paris by sea from Pondicherry. On his way, he visited the National Museum in Cairo and it was on the ship itself that he started learning French. After reaching the French capital, he studied painting under Andre Lhote, a well-known sculptor, painter and a renowned theoretician of art, and Fernand Leger. Lhote’s teaching method entailed sequential drawing of straight lines and curves and alternate use of warm and cool colours which inspired Ram Kumar a lot. “I visited several exhibitions and museums, saw all the art that I’d only read about. In one of the gatherings, I remember a (Henri) Matisse being sold for Rs 200. One can’t even dream of that now,” he reminisces. “When Raza came there, I went to receive him at the station. We used to meet often, go for exhibitions and visit galleries.
I even became a member of the French Communist Party, but that was short-lived.” He mingled with such notable radicals as Louis Aragon and Roger Garaudy and Paul Ellard. He 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 Gustave Courbet, Georges Rouault, Kathe Konitz and Edward Hopper, 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. Fifties onwards, Ram Kumar’s imagery underwent a process of synthesis, refinement and rarefaction. Unlike some of his contemporaries who trained in art abroad and decided to live a greater part of their lives outside India, Ram Kumar combined an internationalist desire with the need to belong emphatically to his homeland. Ask him about settling abroad like Souza and Raza, and he says, “No, I always wanted to come back home.” And how challenging was it to survive in Paris during the early fifties? Was it a completely different world, considering a lot was happening in art, unlike in India, where modern art was still finding its feet? “It was enlightening to be there. To begin with, I went by a boat with a one-way ticket sponsored by my father. I had no funds for a ticket back,” the artist reveals. In Paris, too, he met a French lady who was extremely welcoming of Indian tenants. “I was freelancing for an Indian newspaper from France and started writing when I was still in transit,” 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. His paintings of the late 1950s are then a reaction to the events he witnessed upon his return from Paris. He was acutely aware of his urban surroundings and the pervading sense of disillusionment and alienation he sensed in those around him in India. Writing about his Street Urchins in 1993, the artist said, “The reason I made these sorts of paintings, was that I was a bit inspired by the left politics at that time, there was an inclination towards the tragic side of life … it started here, becoming 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.” His early figurative works were a commentary of the socio-political conditions that the artist was surrounded by.” The figurative work on canvas shows the artist at a creative crossroads between abstraction and figuration. Within a few years he would remove all recognizable figuration and narrative from his paintings. The poignantly presented dramatis personae of the figural works of 1950-54, who grew starker and more angular during 1954-58, totally disappeared during the people-less, but picturesque Sanjoli (Simla Hills) and early Banaras periods when Ram Kumar painted landscapes (1958-61). He first visited Varanasi in 1960 where he sketched the Ganga ghats but without any people. Reminiscing about the initial experience of Varanasi, the artist says, “Banaras is important for me both as an artist and as a human being. The first paintings came at a point when I wanted to develop elements in figurative painting and go beyond it and my first visit to the city invoked an emotional reaction as it had peculiar associations. But such romantic ideas were dispelled when I came face to face with reality. There was so much pain and sorrow of humanity. As an artist it became a challenge to portray this agony and suffering, its intensity required the use of symbolic motifs, so my Benares is of a representative sort.” He was one of the first amongst his contemporaries to give up the figurative in favour of the abstract. But for him “things did not change overnight.
There were no major breaks where I said I won’t do it in this or that manner any more. It was more of a gradual evolution,” he clarifies. His technique too changed. His perspective of looking at things, people, places and the past; put together, his attitude to the continuum of time which was recorded in the psyche and the scene in terms of ‘action’ also changed. Between 1960 and 1964, Ram Kumar used architecture, houses, lanes, shadows and reflections for his imagery. In short, whatever man constructed, he used it as the basis for an abstract formulation. Manmade landmarks formed the architectonic of one aspect of the Banaras period (1961-65). By the late 1960s, Ramkumar decided to draw his images from both kinds of backdrop – of the late figural period, and of the early people-less landscapes. He took the abstract forms of the former period, and the textural impressions of the latter. He compressed the separate messages and imagery and made them become one significant, meaningful unit. This compressed expression, which carries in it the abstract predicament of man and the human and tactile feel of the living landscape, characterizes the style of his later paintings, and; in fact, forms its very substance. Ram Kumar’s work has certain interlocked aspects, expressionist-abstract aspects, which came to be freed, and completely sorted out only in the serene and superb paintings of the phase beginning 1970. After that all became history. Eminent art critic Richard Bartholomew has written in his article entitled ‘The Abstract as a Pictorial Proposition’ about Ram Kumar’s work: “In considering Ram Kumar’s work there are some passages from Wordsworth’s Prelude which apply. I shall cite two short specimens: “I was left alone Seeking the visible world, not knowing why. The props of my affections were removed, And yet the building stood, as if sustained By its own spirit.” This passage applies to the transitional period, when figuration and representational qualities gave way for a more quintessential expression –Sanjoli, early Banaras, middle Banaras periods.” Ram Kumar’s landscapes have been depicted either from the bird’s-eye view or from a worm view point perspective. His paintings should be stated as ‘mindscape’ because those works are not done on the spot rather all the works are from the artists’ memory. Ask him why doesn’t his work find no space for Indian essence/influence, and he states: “My works are neither the landscapes of any place, nor Europe, America or India.” Among the first generation of post-colonial Indian artists, including such luminaries as Souza, Husain, Paritosh Sen, Jehangir Sabavala, Krishen Khanna, Raza and Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar remains something of an anomaly on this list. Though a towering figure of post-Independence Indian art, who is highly sought-after by some of the most prominent collectors, you wouldn’t necessarily know it from his auction record. Just like the artist himself, who prefers listening to people than indulging in oratory and publicity gimmicks, his figures too appear all alone even in a group. Clearly for him, it’s more about the presentation of his art than the projection of his artistic personality.
How do you define the art scenario during the Delhi Shilpi Chakra’s days under the eminent fraternity like B. C. Sanyal, P. N. Mago, Dhanraj Bhagat and Dinkar Koushik?
Yes, that was the place where not only the visual artists, but also performing artists and literature fellows met. Apart from the artists you mentioned, there were many more like Jaya Appasamy, Harkishenlal, Rajesh Mehra and others.
In your university years, you had joined evening classes with Sailoz Mookherjea at Sarada Ukil Art School? How were they different from your classes in Paris?
When I was a student of Sailoz Mookherjea, I was just a beginner and learning the ABC of art. I was doing MA in Economics from Delhi University. That was my first introduction to art. Of course, I remember many profound talks with Sailoz Mookherjea. He was a very strict teacher. We were taught the basic elements of drawing. In Paris, though it was entirely different but the impact was undoubtedly remarkable.
Did Sailoz Mookherjea try to impart some kind of an Indian tradition also?
That issue was not there. In fact, he was giving us live classes, which is rather a western concept. We were supposed to draw still lives and models and get a basic understanding of drawing. When I think of Sailoz now, I feel that he was a real artist, in the true sense of the word, who was unfortunately not given due recognition which he deserved.
Even before you went to Paris, you were drawing figurative. Did you notice any changes after you came back?
Naturally. They were more mature and aesthetically more competent. After my Paris stay, I got more confident of my compositions and other pictorial elements.
In all your figurative paintings of the period, the protagonists look out of the canvas. They are never seen looking at each other and they never have their back on the viewer. The feeling is as if all relationships are missing on that side of canvas, and whatever relationship may be possible are only when the viewer returns their gaze, making up for the missing link….
That may have been incidental. I don’t think there was any mystery in showing their faces and not their backs.
Did you feel they were as alienated as they came to be interpreted later?
I haven’t analysed myself for what I was doing and why. Perhaps my own problems and all that got reflected in those faces. I don’t know. The important point is one’s own attitude which is determined by so many factors – known and unknown.
In your earlier short stories of that period, two themes run rather predominantly – financial insecurity and the desire to go away somewhere, as if all the unhappiness is because one is stuck in a place. Did going away mean something different, something better to you, too?
My short stories are basically confined to my own personal experiences in a lower middle-class home. Ours was a big family, and there was no dearth of problems and interesting situations. I could never be so bold as to run away from all that. It just happened that when I wanted to go to Paris, my father agreed to pay for my one-way passage by boat and I took the plunge. That was a big adventure of my life.
How did your father take to your leaving a secure bank job and taking up painting as a whole time vocation?
He gave in because I persisted. Since financial constrains were not so acute, perhaps he thought, I might as well go to Paris and seek my experiences. Also may be, it was something new to him.
Did it matter that in your formative years, you made friends with persons like Raza and Richard Bartholomew? Did they help bring out in your personality something which you were not aware of?
Before leaving for Paris, I had become friends with Raza. In fact, I had gone to Bombay and spent a month with him. He was very encouraging to younger people who did not have any background in art. At that time, this itself was a great comfort to get from people who were better known and had a deeper involvement in art. In Paris, however, we did not meet as frequently. Raza was more involved with the French art scene. I had found my company with the French leftist writers, painters, and comrades like all the revolutionary young people. But we used to meet together at some Indian friends’ places, like Baldoon Dhingra and Anil de Silva, who were living in Paris at that time. I had also taken a course in French language so I could get around more easily in that society. My friendship with Richard Bartholomew started in Ranikhet in 1952, when we were sharing a cottage. It lasted for almost 30 years, i.e., till his immature death.
Did you bring back any works from Paris?
No, I didn’t do much painting in Paris. Mostly, I was doing drawing in the school. In Paris, I tried to improve my drawing rather than to work oils, which I could always do back in India. I had already exhibited my oils here before going to Paris.
Did you feel pressured that because of your training in Paris, you had to emulate some of the latest trends there?
No, there were no trends like what emerged later on. At that time there were some up and coming painters. Of course, the masters were still around. Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Leger – they were all very active. Their shows were frequently organised in museums, in galleries.
Before you started the Banaras series, was there an interim period when you were leaving behind the figurative?
That was in 1958. It was during my six-month stint in Paris when I had rented an apartment to work there. It is a pity that I don’t have any records of that period now. I was slowly coming to a phase where figures were becoming more and more obscure. Those works were not like a Sad Town or Vagabond. Of course, one could still see a figure, but it was not quite the same thing. The landscape and figures were merging into each other in the forms. Also, once Husain and I got this idea of sketching on the spot and we went to Banaras. It was a unique experience. We would part in the morning and go in different directions and meet only in the evening and show our sketches and drawings of the day to each other.
What surprises you in life? In literature, in art…
The age of getting thrilled is over perhaps. One is confronted with one’s own self. There is a struggle for peaceful existence. In painting, sometimes one is looking for the accidental. For instance, if one is not happy with the results of a particular colour, one can always put another colour on top of it. There are immense possibilities to get at the desired tones and textures on a canvas, while in writing, once a basic text has been written, the options are very limited, no miracles happen at a larger stage.
How often does the accidental happen in your work?
Not very often. By temperament, I am not a very adventurous person. I won’t take a colour all of a sudden, say red against red; trying to see its effect. Whenever I have done that, I have failed miserably. That is why you don’t see many drastic breaks in my work. There are not many moments when I have confronted a completely different thing.
Why don’t we have a revolution in abstraction in India?
For me, very importantly, abstraction is like the Zen practice of the Chinese artist and this is a process to discover the original element akin to the soul’s nonintention rather than mind’s intention for realising the being. We are not here to becoming something, but we have already come prepared with what we actually are.
Touching 92, you are still regularly working. What is the inspiration behind this spirit and how do you feel?
Due to old age, my fingers tremble. But when I hold the brush, that shaking stops magically. I don’t know the reason behind it. I think there’s some spiritual power that enables me to continue my practice. I want to continue working as long as I can
What is your opinion about contemporary Indian artist or the future generation?
To express my view in this regard, I would say that the present generation of artists should focus more on free hand drawings, which I think is the foundation for being a perfect art practitioner. An artist has to be sound in both learning and practicing. Then only one can deliver the finesse of an artwork.
