Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern Fine Arts | June 2017

46 K. Ramanujam (1941 – 1973) Wedding Couple Ink and wash on paper laid on card, 1967 S/d ‘K Ramanujam/67’ l.r. 11.3 x 7.6 in (28.6 x 19.2 cm) Provenance Formerly acquired from Sotheby’s March 2007 auction & Osian’s, Mumbai auctions; thereafter acquired by a Delhi- based Collector. INR 600,000 – 900,000 USD 9,375 – 14,063 The uniqueness of K. Ramanujam’s art could be explained by creating links between his handicaps, his sexual frustrations, his love to be a respected gentleman, the fantasy and magic of Tamil cinema, especially Vasan’s Chandralekha, the artistic influences of Paniker & Cholamandal, and the like, but at the end of the day, his artistic creative genius should be best seen as that great force, that virtually impregnable self- discipline which keeps sanity ticking away. That which gives our will for life motivation, at least enough until, the spectre of suicide hovers like the darkest phantom, and suddenly all the joy and awareness for life seems insufficient to tackle this sensation of loneliness and pain, pain that a spirit which has failed to find love and companionship, simple expectations from a world full of six billions of people, cannot bear to endure anymore. Art failed Ramanujam in this final test of answering his reason to live. His [Ramanujam’s] burdened imagination was full of dreams and fantasies, strange imagery and visions. For him, the activities of painting and drawing became truly vehicles of outlet for the externalization of private fantasy. An enchanting and disquieting world he portrayed on his canvases whether they were elaborate drawings or brightly coloured paintings. His universe has the three tiers of the ‘brahmand’ – the heaven, the sky and the earth – in which winged and draped creatures float from one to another, being carried in boats or dangling over swings, roof-tops or in mid-air. Ratan Parimoo rpt. in Studies in Modern Indian Art, Kanak Publications, 1975, p. 95. “He [Ramanujam] read almost anything he could get in Tamil, and drew from such sources as mythology, Chandamama stories, palmistry, Tamil films and things that he would pick up, like shells, or the maze of veins of a dead leaf, to cast his ‘dreams’.” Josef James rpt. in Cholamandal an Artists’ Village , OUP, 2004, p278. He creates an imaginary ‘bricolage’ universe made up of heterogenous elements – architectural constructions, Tamil gods, sacred animals, children’s books, snatches from the French Impressionaists, and Venetian scenes…His fantasy figures ride composite beasts with elongated lambs’ heads and serpents’ tails in an imaginary space. Partha Mitter Indian Art (Oxford University Press, 2001), 214. “The awareness of a world other than the one he creates in his pictures is a sign of maturity in an artist. He begins to be cautious of his own spontaneity and seeks to verify his intuition. It is the total absence of this element that makes Ramanujam’s work distinct. He paints as if his world and the image he has of himself in it are the only things he knows or the only things he can ever know. He portrays this with great fidelity and high competence... At a time when artists in the country attempt to make their creations real to themselves and convincing to others in terms of the two ‘worlds’ that of Modernity and Tradition, there is a danger of losing incidentally a quality of innocent intimacy with oneself which makes for one his personal legend. Ramanujam’s work is rich in this quality.” Indian Modern Fine Arts | 109