Osian's Auction Catalogue Select Masterpieces of Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | June 2009

99 45 Ramkumar (b.1924) Varanasi series Oil on canvas pasted on board, 1963-64 22.0 x 29.9 in (56.8 x 76.0 cm) Provenance Purchased from Gallery Chemould in 1964 INR 5,600,000 – 7,000,000 USD 116,670 – 145,830 “The first contact with Varanasi was very awe inspiring. The humanity was tremendous, a vastness. Old women with heads shaved, pilgrims,… We were sketching, but then I thought that the humanity was such an important part in Varanasi, so it is better to eliminate it, because I would never be able to do justice to it. And so I took out the people, and this went on for about ten years, till about the 1970s…I visited Varanasi about half a dozen times in these years, sketching, to revive and refresh my memories, and of course they change from time to time. At the beginning they were just images of ghats, straightforward, but later they became more complicated and organisational. After all I was maturing as a painter also, and so memories of Varanasi receded.” – Ramkumar in conversation with Neville Tuli, rpt. in The Flamed Mosaic , Mapin & HEART, 1997, p365. “The eternal city: this is how Benaras is often described, even Ram Kumar’s Benaras. Eternal, that is, timeless. Yet in his images the process of time is everywhere apparent; in the dissolution of the surface and substance of materials, of the architecture of forms, the shrines and dwellings made by man. For all its impassive façade, his Benaras is like a sprawling relic, a citadel encrusted by the deposit of age and eroded by time.” – Geeta Kapur, rpt. in rpt. in Contemporary Indian Artists, Vikash Publishing, 1978, p. 74.