Osian's Auction Catalogue Indian Modern Fine Arts | February 2019

126 | Osian’s – Connoisseurs of Art 59 RAMKUMAR 23 September 1924 / 18 April 2018 Untitled Oil on textured paper, 1999 S/d ‘Ram Kumar 99’ on verso Inscribed ‘21 x 28’ on verso 22.9 x 29.8 in (58.2 x 75.8 cm) Provenance Lots 59 & 60 are the Properties of a Mumbai-based Collector-cum- Gallerist INR 600,000 – 900,000 US$ 8,451 – 12,676 Land, map, vista: Ram Kumar approaches the expanse of the visible world in various provisional forms…he is not strictly speaking, a practitioner of the landscape genre. He does not stand outside a panorama and marvel at it; rather by setting in motion a series of constantly changing approximations of the visible, he permeates the object of his gaze with his own subjectivity, his hesitations and exhilarations. Neither neutral observer nor manic enthusiast, he is a refined amorist of the landscape. If his picture surface can withdraw into a willful abstraction, it can also resolve itself into a conciliatory gesture that almost steps across the threshold of realistic representation. – Ranjit Hoskote rpt. in Masters of Indian Contemporary Art Palette Art Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, October 2005