Ram Kumar (1924-2018)

(First read at the Ram Kumar Memorial, New Delhi, April 25, 2018)

Dear Ram Kumarji,

Perhaps there is no suitable protocol for the posthumous letter. While you were alive I occasionally wrote on your solo exhibitions - except perhaps the last few -that had been mounted over the last 30 odd years.

Painting is the only thing that is there for Ram Kumar

Published in The Telegraph, 10 August, 2014

It is difficult to hold a conversation with Ram Kumar, who will turn 90 in two months’ time, over the telephone without trying to imagine the impact of one’s questions - often routine, plebeian ones - reflecting on the fine but strong features of this

Thinking with the hand

There is a line in Coetzee’s introduction to Patrick White’s novel, The Vivisector - “White’s visionaries in general think intuitively rather than abstractly; if his painters can be said to think at all, they think in paint” - which is equally applicable to the nonagenarian artist, Ram Kumar. To continue

From Solitude to Salvation

Ram Kumar’s major retrospective, as this exhibition happens to be, comes none too late. Not that it is time to sum up, for how can one ‘sum up’ the works of an artist who is alive, working, perpetually creative and full of unpredictable surprises. It is even more difficult, in the case of Ram Kumar,

Ram Kumar: A Pilgrim's Journey

“When I paint, I don’t think about any specific elements - be they spiritual or supernatural elements of nature. They are paintings pure, simple, plain, painted colour propositions emerging from one’s past experiences.”

Ram Kumar.

While looking at a work of art, particularly a painting, which bears

Between Being and Nothingness

The artist today is often tempted to add to the noise of the time by proclaiming all too loudly his presence in his work. Ram Kumar, on the other hand, hides himself in his paintings. It is a presence so shy and unobstrusive as to come very near to an absence.

Ram Kumar has no desire to shock or